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THE RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 



THE 



RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 



OF THE AGE, 



WITH A GLANCE AT 



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BEING ADDRESSES DELIVERED AT THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE YOUNG 

MEN'S CHRISTIAN UNION OF NEW YORK, ON THE 

13th AND 14th DAYS OF MAY, 1858. 



BY 



SAMUEL OSGOOD, D.D., 

T. J. SAWYER, D.D., 

Rev. 0. B. FROTHLNGHAM, 

Rev. HENRY BLANCHARD, 

Rev. C. MIEL, 

Rev. B. F. BARRETT, 



E. H. CHAPLN, D.D., 
HENRY W. BELLOWS, D.D. 
Rev. A. D. MAYO, 
Rev. T. W. HIGGINSON, 
Rev. B. PETERS, 
RICHARD WARREN, Esq., 



Hon. HORACE GREELEY. 



NEW YORK: 
THATCHER & HUTCHINSON, 

523 (ST. NICHOLAS hotel) BROADWAY. 
1858. 



B'Rscr 






Entered according to Act of CongreBS, in the year 1858, by 

THATCHER & HUTCHINSON, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United Statea, for the Southern District of New York. 



W. H. Tinson, Stcreotyper and Printer, 

Rear of 43 & 45 Centre St., N. Y. 



MTHOrtAWN 
J UN I* ■ 1-919 

PUBLIC U33ABY 
W AS^^UTON, - 0. a 



PUBLISHERS' PREFACE. 



VASHINQTON, D. O. 



The Anniversary of the "Young Men's Christian Union of 
New York," on the 13th and 14th days of May, 1858, may 
justly be considered as marking an era in the history of the 
progress of the Christian Church in America ; inasmuch as it 
was the first instance in which so many of the leading minds 
in the various branches of the . liberal and progressive portion 
of the Christian Church have met on one common platform, for 
the purpose of discussing the practical bearings of that higher 
type of Christianity which refuses to be limited by any dogma, 
or fettered by any creed. 

The occasion was one of peculiar interest. Such an array 
of talent as the speakers presented, would, under any circum- 
stances, have given assurance of a rare literary feast ; but 
when representatives of different branches of the Christian 
Church, hitherto somewhat antagonistic, found themselves side 
by side on a broad platform of Christian Charity and Brotherly 
Love, they could not but draw inspiration from the occasion 
as well as the soul-inspiring themes on which they dwelt. 

Believing that the publication of these addresses, in a suitable 
form for preservation, as well as for general distribution, will 
be rendering a valuable service to the cause of practical Christ- 
ianity, and one that practical Christians all over the land will 
appreciate and encourage, we have assumed the risk, confi- 
dently relying on the efforts of all who sympathize with the 



iv publishers' preface. 



progressive Christian spirit of the age, to extend their circu- 
lation. 

The " Religious Aspects of the Age," with a glance at the 
" Church of the Present and the Church of the. Future," is a 
subject in which all are, or should be, interested, and this 
title has been adopted on account of its peculiar adaptation to 
the contents of the book. 

To accommodate the means and tastes of all, we shall pub- 
lish a cheap pamphlet edition, and another on superior paper, 
and neatly bound in cloth. 



MARTIN THATCHER, ) p 
ORREN HUTCHINSON, 1UBLISHERS * 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE 

OPENING ADDRESS 6 

By Richard Warren, Esq., President of the Union. 



THE CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OP THE FUTURE, . . 13 
By Sakuel Osgood, D.D. 

THE TRUE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION, > . . . .31 
By Rev. B. F. Barrett. 

WORSHIP— ITS NECESSITY, 45 

By Rev. B. Peters. 

THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT OF REFORM, 64 

By Horace Greeley. 

THE TRUE GROUNDS OF CHRISTIAN UNION, .... 63 
By Rev. A. D. Mayo. 

WOMAN LN CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION, 73 

By Rev. T. W. Higginson. 



VI CONTENTS. 

PA6B 

CHRISTIAN UNION, 89 

By Rev. C. Miel. 

INFLUENCE OF THEOLOGICAL THEORIES UPON THE PRAC- 
TICAL CONDUCT OF LIFE, 96 

By Henry "W. Bellows, D.D. 

THE RELIGION OF FEAR AND THE RELIGION OF LOVE, . . 112 
By Rev. Henry Blanchard. 

PROPER TREATMENT OF THE INFIDEL TENDENCIES OF OUR 

DAT, 121 

By Rev. 0. B. Frothingham. 

TRUE AND FALSE YIEWS OF EVANGELICAL RELIGION, . . 135 
By T. J. Sawyer, D.D. 

TENDENCIES OF THE AGE FRffiNDLY TO LARGER YIEWS OF 

CHRISTIANITY, 153 

By E. H. Chapin, D.D. 



APPENDIX, 165 

Conclusion of Dr. Osgood's Address, in the form of a Letter 
to the Publishing Committee. 



RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 



OPENING ADDKESS. 

BY RICHARD WARREN, ESQ., 

President of the Union, 

On this first public anniversary of the " Young Men's 
Christian Union," it has seemed to the Committee of 
Arrangements proper that some account of it should be 
given ; and the duty has devolved on me, as the Presi- 
dent, to state in brief, what the Union is, and what are 
its main objects. 

Let me premise by remarking that ere this Union was 
formed, there was a " Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion " in this city, which exists now. It is composed of 
those who claim to be, and who style themselves " evan- 
gelical," in contradistinction to other sects in the 
churches, who will not go far enough in doctrines which 
the Association deems essential to salvation. Therefore 
all who do not come to that standard are excluded from 
being members. Most of the doctrines maintained by 
that Association are held by the great number of 
churches in our midst. They are, of course, the doc- 



6 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

trines of the Trinity, and of innate moral depravity. As 
belief in peculiar doctrines is made the test of member- 
ship, they who cannot subscribe to such belief as is re- 
quired, are precluded from becoming members. 

A number of young men belonging to the more liberal 
churches, feeling the desire of more Christian union than 
seemed to exist, conceived the idea of forming one on a 
broad and catholic platform, the basis of which should 
not be a belief in any peculiar dogma or doctrine, but a 
belief in Christianity itself. With such views this Union 
was commenced, designed to call together men of vari- 
ous shades of opinion ; each one perhaps varying from 
his neighbor in some things, while all would agree that 
Jesus the Christ was lawgiver, guide, and exemplar, 
speaking with the authority of God the Father, to all 
men. No one professing faith in Christ is to be exclud- 
ed from this Union. 

On this broad principle of religious liberty, this Union 
is founded. It is broad enough to receive all who are 
not dogmatists; but, as the so-called Christian world 
is at present constituted, it would seem that there is 
more need of holding up to men points of theology and 
dogmas, than of true and practical Christianity, in obe- 
dience to the commands of Jesus the Christ. 

Of course, they who compose this Union comprise but 
a small minority of the nominal Christians even, in this 
great city. It must look for any great increase to its 
number of members to those churches which represent 
Liberal Christianity ; and I would not use the word in 
any technical sense, as indicating a particular party. It 



, OPENING ADDKESS. 7 

must look to churches or societies of Christians who be- 
lieve that a man's truest faith is to be known by his 
works; to those societies and churches who not only 
theoretically believe in the fatherhood of God, and the 
brotherhood of man ; but who also practically strive to 
carry out into all life the commendable and the unmis- 
taken results of such a belief. There are enough of such 
in the community to form a very large society, would 
they but come out and work together for the greatest 
welfare of humanity. 

The Union is serious in holding the ideas above named. 
It is not a mere abstraction. It believes in one God, the 
Father, the self-existent Creator. It believes in Jesus 
Christ, his Son, whose precepts, carried out, are for the 
true life of man ; whose precepts, if faithfully followed, 
would assure the world that he is indeed the Redeemer, 
who saves men from sin. It believes that the Spirit of 
the Father is willing to work with every man, his child, 
in every true work. It cannot throw the responsibility 
that rests on each individual, that rests on him alone ? 
upon any one else. It cannot believe in mere expedi- 
ency. It cannot compromise the right. It agrees with 
Channing that " the first question to be proposed by a 
rational being is, not what is profitable, but what is 
right." 

"The right is the supreme good, and includes all 
other good. In seeking and adhering to it, we secure 
our true and only happiness. All prosperity not founded 
on it, is built on sand. If human affairs are controlled, 
as we believe, by Almighty Rectitude and Impartial 



8 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

Goodness, then to hope for happiness from wrong doing, 
is as insane as to seek health and prosperity by rebelling 
against the laws of nature, by sowing our seed on the 
ocean, or making poison our common food. There is 
but one unfailing good, and that is fidelity to the ever- 
lasting law written on the heart, and rewritten and re- 
published in God's "Word." 

The Union begins on the assumption that a mere be- 
lief in any doctrine, not embraced in the actual life of 
Christ, is not essential to salvation ; that no subscription 
to a dogma, or to a creed, is of itself, nor in itself, of 
any vital use to an immortal being, only in as far as his 
life — the every-day of life, of his every-day avocations — 
shall be governed and regulated by the truth that is em- 
bodied in his faith, so that his fellow-men may know that 
he is striving to lead a holy life, in strict conformity to 
the teachings of the Master ; that his aim ever is " to do 
justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly on the earth." 

This Union believes that God is the Father of all men, 
and that all men are brothers ; that it is the Christian 
duty of every man to care for others as well as for him- 
self, holding ever up to view the words of Christ : "As 
a man sows, so shall he reap." It would put away the 
terrors of the law by calling all God's children to see a 
Father's love, knowing that perfect love casteth out 
fear. 

Another object this Union has. It would bring to- 
gether particularly the young men of the city, so that 
there shall be a closer sympathy; that the different 
views which have impressed the mind, and which now lie 



OPENING ADDRESS. 9 

in the mind without power, because without expression, 
may be brought out to the light ; thus every one will be 
a learner, and each one, perhaps, a teacher. It is pos- 
sible that such results can be obtained without the inter- 
vention of a creed of man's device. The Union claims 
that Christianity has a right to and should embrace 
everything in life. 

"All that's fair and bright are thine." 

It demands of Art, of Science, of Music, of Politics, 
of business of every kind, and of all human good, that 
they shall all bow down before the cross of Christ, and 
become sanctified and exalted. It fears not to. hear a 
true man speak the sincere convictions of his inmost 
heart, if spoken in brotherly kindness, without dictation. 
No one's conscientious scruples are compromised in this 
Union. No majority has power to seem even to control 
one. There is argument, and there is discussion, to en- 
force, or to illustrate, or to draw out the truest ideas of 
a right course of life under the teachings of the Gospel, 
and under the Providence of God. 

As yet the Union is young in years and in develop- 
ment ; but it has already demonstrated that there may 
be union with diversity of opinion. It has already done 
some good, and I believe it is destined to accomplish 
much, if it can have what it now has not, but what it 
needs. It wants the sympathy of members ; it wants 
the aid of faithful inquiring ones ; it calls on all the 
children of God, not to throw away faith in Him and 
his Son, but to make that faith seen, as a light set on a 

1* 



10 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

hill, shining brighter and brighter to the perfect day. 
It calls upon all our churches to unite. It calls on pa- 
rents to advise their sons to come to its meetings, and to 
take an active part there. It asks the parents, too, to 
join with it. It calls on the young men, new residents 
of the city, to come and find fellowship and brotherly 
kindness, hoping that hereafter it will do much for the 
cause of true Christianity on a scale much broader than 
has been done in the past. It asks of every one to unite 
to strive to bring down the kingdom of heaven to earth 
— not in any merely visionary or theological sense, but 
really and truly, so that every man's life shall attest the 
truth of his professions. 

The great central doctrine and life of Christianity is, 
that God is the universal Father, and every human be- 
ing is a child of God. The good Tuckerman, who for 
years labored to raise men from degradation — who has, 
I doubt not, with him where he is in peace, many souls 
as seals of his ministry — thus wrote : " The universal 
brotherhood of man is a fundamental doctrine of the 
Gospel. It is essentially one with the great primary 
doctrine of God the universal Father." 

The Christ says to each one who calls himself or her- 
self a disciple ; it says to all, whether they call them- 
selves disciples or not : Are you a child of God ? So is 
every human being. Is he, then, who performs for you 
the humblest services, who waits at your table, who car- 
ries your burdens, who does your biddings, a man ? He 
is, then, your brother, and God requires that you love 
and treat him as a brother. Is he who comes to you for 



OPENING ADDRESS. ll 

advice or aid in his difficulties and suffering, a man % Is 
the most outcast beggar who asks your charity in the 
streets, or the most guilty convict to be seen in any pri- 
son, a man ? Is the poor slave, chained down to a hard 
service, treated as a beast of burden, is he a man ? God's 
higher law — the highest law proclaimed by his Son, 
written on the heart of every true being, says, Yes ! 
Then all these are as a brother to you : 

" Had but a hundredth part of the zeal and labor 
been directed to the excitement and maintenance of the 
spirit of Christian brotherhood among men, which have 
been employed by individuals and sects for the exten- 
sion and maintenance of articles of faith, which never 
advanced them a hair's-breadth in the Christian life, 
millions would have been brought to the knowledge of 
Christ, who have perished in ignorance of him." 

The Union does not ignore the fact of a diversity of 
positions in human life, and it believes that life is, by 
the wisdom of God, unsearchable to man, ordained so 
that there shall be mutual dependence ; and in the 
Father's sight all who are faithful to the light within 
them, are equal. 

"Honor and shame from no condition rise ; 
Act well your part ; there all the honor lies." 

The Church of the Past has been slow in receiving 
the teachings of the Son of God in their practical bear- 
ings. Denunciations have been hurled in tones of thun- 
der from the pulpits. Men have heard that they had no 



12 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

power to save themselves, although the Apostle preached 
that we must work out our own salvation. Church has 
condemned Church, and the theological gladiators have 
stood up to battle down, not only the faith, but also the 
hopes of their brother man. Dogmatism is rampant 
now, in this nineteenth century of the Christian era ; 
and he who would do the will of God> if he believes in 
the popular theology, cannot do it unless he will first 
believe many things abhorrent to his reason, inconsistent 
with his idea of a Father in Heaven, and in direct vio- 
lation of that conscience that God has implanted in 
every one. 

This shall not be so in the Church of the Future. 
Men will come out from every sect in Christendom — 
there are signs now of such a coming out — and breaking 
asunder the bands that bound them to dogmas and 
creeds, they will come to the true light, as from a prison- 
house, and will unite in the great work of saving men 
from sin and misery, and of raising them to the liberty 
of the children of God. 

This is to be the Catholic Church of the Future, whose 
foundation-stone is Jesus the Christ ; whose builder is 
God, the Father ; whose platform is broad enough to 
admit all of every name, and of every nation, into the 
household of God, into the family of human brotherhood. 

This the Young Men's Christian Union aims to labor 
for. It calls on all to work with it. Laying aside party 
and peculiar views, it spreads out its banner to the 
breeze, on which is inscribed man's equality in the sight 
of God, a child's fidelity, and a brother's duty. 



THE CATHOLICITY OF THE CHUKCH OF 
THE FITTUKE. 

BY SAMUEL OSGOOD, D.D., 

Oj the Church of the Messiah, New York. 

Me. President : — The occasion is somewhat peculiar. 
We meet here not as individuals, nor as members of cer 
tain denominations; but as Christians upon common 
Christian ground — an attitude that should not be rare, 
and yet it is somewhat unusual. We meet here as Christ- 
ians upon common Christian ground, and what is very 
remarkable is the fact, that this ground of common 
Christianity does really put us in virtual antagonism to 
the great majority of the Christian world. The great 
majority of Christian people, as represented in New 
York this very week, do not seem to believe that there 
can be any religion common to all Christians. Their 
views are so antagonistic to each other that they cannot 
meet as Christians to any large extent, upon any central 
platform, and the very organizations that aim to bring 
the sects together, prove by the very specialty of their 
purpose the want of those broad principles of Christian 
charity without which there can be no union. 

We, as aiming at Christian Catholicity, find ourselves, 
therefore, in a minority. And for one, I am ever ready 



14 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

to be in a minority. It seems to me that, looking through 
the whole history of the human race from the beginning, 
there is great deal to be said of the minority, and that 
it is, generally, a very respectable body. When Chris- 
tianity began, and the Chnrch was very small, limited 
to some twelve or seventy persons, that minority, though 
very few, was not to be despised. At the beginning of 
the Protestant Reformation, when a little company met 
around Martin Luther, that company made up in 
quality for its limit in quantity. I once heard of 
a Frenchman, who said with a great deal of a French- 
man's simplicity, that he always had one rule in life ; 
that, whenever a difficulty occurred, he always looked 
to see which was the strongest party, and he went for 
that side. There are a great many people who think 
and act upon this principle. But the true nobility of 
God have not been of this character, and without aim- 
ing to be of that elect class, we may, perhaps, take suf- 
ficient courage from these reflections, and congratulate 
ourselves that we are in a minority. 

"We are assembled on this occasion not as contro- 
versialists, but as brethren, and we would express our 
own honest convictions respecting the Catholicity of 
the Church of the Future, although I am well aware 
that the great body of the Christian world will not look 
upon me or you as in any true way towards Catholicity. 

This subject is very suggestive and interesting, occu- 
pying the minds of many thinkers in all parts of Christ- 
endom now. It is, indeed, somewhat presumptuous for 
any man to undertake to say what the Future will be. 



CATHOLICITY OF THE CHUKCH OF THE FUTURE. 15 

It is quite difficult for us to say accurately and philo- 
sophically what is the present state of things, and surely 
the man who understands the history of the past is a 
sage. If the man who understands the current expe- 
rience of the present day must needs be a profound 
philosopher, what must he be who shall undertake to 
designate the Church of the Future ? I would not subject 
myself to any charge of presumption, but will confess 
with all simplicity at the outset, that the Church of the 
Future is to be greater than our theories of its constitu- 
tion, and, like all great providential developments, it 
will be fully known only when it appears and speaks for 
itself. My modest task now is merely to sketch a few 
outlines of its proportions from obvious ideas and events. 
First of all, let me say, the Church of the Future is to 
be reverential, and not destructive. The deepest wisdom 
of our race is reverential, not destructive. Men have 
tried the experiment of destroying old institutions with- 
out replacing them by new. One of the most radical 
men of our day, the great Positivist of France, Auguste 
Comte, lately deceased, maintained that the only way to 
destroy old institutions is by replacing them. Thus from 
the very extreme of radicalism, we are justified in our 
position, while we maintain that there is a cause for the 
existence of every power and institution, and that no 
great organization can be wisely set aside unless its place 
is filled by a more suitable one. It is not well, then, in 
speaking of the Church of the Future, to speak dispa- 
ragingly of the Church of the Past. I can speak no 
unkind word of our ecclesiastical mother, and the Christ 



16 "RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

ian Church is the mother of us all. The institution in 
which we meet here together to-day, — the congregations 
to which we all belong, are branches of the true vine, 
and we are children of what may be called the Church 
of the Past. As we meet together here to-day, bound 
by the tie of common faith in Christ, we are not to de- 
spise the Christianity of former times, and I believe that 
there is no assembly this week in ISTew York, which is 
so disposed to treat reverently the Christianity of former 
times, as this assembly of our own. We are to treat reve- 
rently the Christianity of former times because we respect 
its root, and we should regard charitably its branches. 
"What are we to regard as the root, or the essential prin- 
ciple of the ancient Church ? The presence of God in 
our humanity, the witness of the infinite and eternal 
spirit in the human soul — that is an essential idea of 
every form of the Christian religion. The root of the 
Ancient Church was faith in God's presence with true 
believers, and a close fellowship growing out of that 
faith. The essential idea thus accepted is to be always 
reverently regarded, and however much we may enlarge 
our idea of the manifestations of God, we can never slight 
the mighty recognition of this manifestation to men by 
the Ancient Church, in its progress through Abraham, 
Moses, David and Isaiah, and, at last, through Jesus 
Christ and his Apostles, to the communions of Jerusa- 
lem, Antioch, Ephesns, Alexandria, Rome, Constanti- 
nople, and all the great cities of Christendom. The seed 
was of God, although the soil and nurture may have 
been of men. "We do not believe that God is a new 



CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 17 

invention, or that His presence in the human soul is a new 
revelation. We believe that God hath never left Him- 
self without a witness in any age. We believe that 
there were divine and permanent elements in the most 
ancient dispensation. The law was given by Moses, and 
we have that law in Jesus Christ in its blessed fulfill- 
ment. In him the light of the eternal Word was made 
known in direct manifestation through its anointed 
head, and the early Christian Church was the witness 
of that Word. JSTow surely we ought not to treat the 
old religions with contempt, because the whole germ 
was not fully developed in the past. Looking at the 
branches of the Ancient Church, we are to interpret 
them with the charity of fellowship, while we regard 
the root with the spirit of reverence. 

Surveying Christendom at large, I suppose we may 
discern in it three general divisions ; although we may, 
perhaps, justly add a fourth. There is what may be 
called the High Church, the Low Church, and the Broad 
Church. The true representative of the High Church 
is the Roman Catholic — the most consistent and respect- 
able exclusive Church in Christendom. If we are going 
to play the exclusive, there is but one respectable posi- 
tion for us, and we should go to the Pope, for he under- 
stands that business, as he has been studying in a school 
that has been in practice for thousands of years. He is 
a legitimate High Churchman. His doctrine is the legi- 
timacy of the priesthood, and by the incarnation of God 
in Christ, he claims power to dispense sacramental graces 
through a close corporation of priests. This is High 



18 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

Churcliism, in its day a noble institution, and what is more 
clear than that, all forms of extreme modern High 
Churcliism, whether English or German, are assuming 
the type of this old Catholicism. The extreme High 
Church portion of the Church of England is going over 
to Home. The Broad Church party is the life of the 
Protestant principle in that Church; but the scholars 
and devotees and poets of the retrogressive Oxford School 
have looked fondly towards Rome, and turned towards 
the Eternal City with their faces when they have not 
gone thither bodily. 

The Low Church we regard as that which, whether 
called Episcopal, Presbyterian or Independent, does not 
base itself upon priestly legitimacy, but upon the Scrip- 
ture as a literal revelation of the mind of God, and upon 
doctrines essentially Calvinistic as the teachings of Scrip- 
ture. They interpret the Scriptures in, such a way as 
to narrow down the whole of revelation to a few points, 
and mainly to a single doctrine ; that the justification of 
our totally depraved and doomed human souls, rests not 
on the essential mercy of God in all forms and in its eter- 
nal offers, but upon that mercy only as purchased by 
the substitution and sacrifice of Christ in place of the 
sinful. This is essentially the Low Church doctrine; 
and John Calvin is the great head of all Low Church- 
men. I may use " Low Churchmen " in the philosophical 
sense, and not merely in the sense in which it is used in 
the Church of England. This is the Holy "Week of Low 
Churchism or Evangelicanism in New York that is now 
passing. It is because this Association cannot accept 



CATHOLICITY OF THE CHUECH OF THE FUTURE. 19 

the principles of the exclusive doctrine called. " Evan- 
gelical," that yon invite your friends here to-day to this 
season of worship and meditation. Now let us not dis- 
parage what we call the Low Church, for many of us 
are the children of this Church. I, myself, was bap- 
tized in a Calvinist Congregation alist Church, by a 
Calvinist minister of the old school, and I am quite 
ready to believe that, in spite of his very narrow and 
chilling doctrine, he was a pious man, and his soul full 
of the love of God. But the fact of his pious character 
did not necessarily make his doctrine an infallible 
rule. 

We are to respect Puritanism — the extreme of Low 
Churchism — for its liberty and valor in assailing the 
old despotisms. If we take away the element of liberty 
from the old Calvinistic doctrine, the system is less 
godly, less humane, than old Romanism in its best days, 
or even than the old Hebrew system. The Calvinistic 
system is more narrow in its estimate of humanity, less 
true to God's mercy here and hereafter, less liberal in 
its views of human life, less cognizant of its more genial 
side, than was old Judaism, or the ancient Church of 
Rome. The type of humanity as recognized in the old 
church was larger and nobler far than according to the 
model set up in the Institutes of John Calvin. I honor 
that man for his Protestant determination, and his 
adherence to liberty — as he understood it in his day, 
although he was false to his principle by limiting free- 
dom of conscience to his own Church at Geneva, and 
because the blood of an innocent man was virtually 



20 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

upon his bigoted hands. The Low Church doctrine is 
inconsistent. It is impossible for the common type of 
Evangelical orthodoxy to prove its usual doctrine of the 
plenary authority and verbal inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures, without going back to the infallibility of the Ancient 
Church, which transmits to us the Scriptures. And this 
whole system of the literal inspiration of the Bible, 
which gives equal force to the imprecations of David 
against his enemies, and to the beatitudes of our blessed 
Lord upon the Mount, is radically defective and unten- 
able without going over to Rome, the only constituted 
representative of absolutism in religion, and for ages the 
Providential guardian of the sacred books. I believe, 
not only, that Calvinism is thus inconsistent, but that it 
is not in the front rank of humanity now ; when it was 
upon the side of liberty, it was progressive and honor- 
able, not on account of its exclusiveness, but on account 
of its liberty. Its liberty we may honor, whilst its 
exclusiveness we reject. 

Calvinism is now in the way of humanity, and they 
who professedly wear its mantle are, above all others, the 
censors of its superstitions. It narrows God's mercies into 
an arbitrary partiality and substitutes the king of the 
elect in place of the Father of Spirits. It does not pre- 
sent God's love to us in nature and in humanity, nor in 
the whole compass even of the gospel does it show forth 
the Father's mercy — not in the whole life of our blessed 
Lord himself, but as only indicated in one act of our 
Lord's mission — his death — and in only one aspect of 
that act. It seemed to think only of a dying Christ, 



CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 21 

while the Broad Church thinks of a living Christ loving 
the whole world, and dying because he loved all and 
would save all. In this living Christ we devoutly be- 
lieve ; even in that Divine Humanity now living in 
heaven ; now the mediator of the new covenant ; now 
the Comforter in every affliction, dispensing spiritual 
blessings to the human race. 

We respect what is called the Low Church in spite of 
its exclusive doctrines, on account of the noble principles 
that have been manifested in its career, and the piety and 
charity that have often been exhibited by its champions in 
spite of itself. But we look upon the system as wholly 
unreasonable, and it seems to us, to be sinking fast in the 
judgment of the ablest thinkers and scholars of the New 
Christendom, whilst its positive merits are likely to be 
lost sight of by the young and progressive minds even 
of orthodoxy itself. 

I might say, adding another to the number of 
churches I have named, that there is another division, 
the No Church, or party of individual liberty, which 
starts upon the idea of entire individuality, and believes, 
in popular phrase, in " going upon its own hook." I 
suppose if we take the representation of the High 
Church to be Hildebrand, and of the Low Church to be 
Calvin, there is no better type for what may be called 
the No Church than our own gifted Ealph Waldo 
Emerson. He may be fitly called the prophet of the 
first person singular. He has a certain kind of respect 
for the human race as a race, but a very large respect 
for that portion of it incorporated into each man's char- 



22 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

acter, especially in his own personality. He was very 
desirons to see the old world and learn for himself what 
the ages have been doing. He enjoyed his visit like a 
poet and philosopher, but found at Home and Florence 
only his own soul repeated in the creations of 
Raphael and Michael Angelo. Florence could do little 
for him, for he had seen it all virtually before in the 
visions and fancies of his own mind in the bush at good 
old Concord in Massachusetts. "We all belong to a great 
humanity, and no one man makes, or comprehends, the 
whole of that humanity, for " God created man in 
His own image ; male and female created he them." The 
whole race, therefore, men and women, represents the 
divine image, and the creed of individualism is unsound, 
by mistaking a part for the whole. 

But this ~No Church is to be respected. "We are to 
remember that in all ages there has been a humanity 
not in church relations, and which has had, moreover, 
some essentially Christian elements. There has been a 
great deal of humanity that was Christ-like before Christ 
came. I suppose there are speakers in this city to-day 
— although I hope there are not a great many of them 
— who believe that all the heathen, Pythagoras, 
Socrates, Pluto, Confucius, and all their peers, are 
doomed to everlasting woe because they did not believe 
in Christ, and were naturally depraved. We entertain 
no such damnable doctrine, believing that every man 
who is true to his best light is justified before God, and 
that there have been true men in all ages. And as 
there is, and always has been, a large humanity outside 



CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF TI1E FUTURE. 23 

the Christian Church, embodying in itself important 
elements of religion, and as we are to carry every worthy 
element of life into the Church of the Future, we are 
to accept that form of humanity that appears in strong 
individuality, and to take the " No Church " into our 
keeping. If we were to ask ourselves, where is the 
truest humanity, inside of exclusive churches or out- 
side, the answer would be quite difficult. If we were 
asked where we would place our chance of salvation, 
with the great body of honest, unpretending worldings 
who are outside of the Pharasaic Churches, or with the 
Sanhedrims of exclusives who shut themselves up in 
their self-righteousness, and call themselves the elect 
saints of God, our chance might be as good with the 
worldlings, although we much prefer a place in the true, 
free, and universal Church of God. 

But the Christian Church may not only be considered 
under these various points, but in an aspect still more 
comprehensive, and one which regards our religion as 
answering to every worthy interest in life. The Broad 
Church accepts this last idea ; and will not disown any- 
thing that is true to our humanity. The Broad Church 
will recognize the elements of real worth in the High 
Church, especially its comprehensive policy, and beau- 
tiful tastes ; it will appreciate the germ of truth in 
the Low Church, especially its rugged vigor and Pro- 
testant freedom ; nor will it scorn the No Church, 
which is independent, nor neglect to learn some wis- 
dom from the Come Outer ? The Broad Church, which 
is rising in every quarter of Christendom, does not 



24 EELIGIOUS ASFECTS OF THE AGE. 

despise anything that is true to our common humanity 
in its personal and Catholic development. There is 
nothing more cheering towards such anticipations than 
the movements among the noblest believers of the 
Church of England now. Attached to their own 
ecclesiastical polity, they accept the leadings of God's 
Providence, and are not blind to the light now breaking 
upon Christendom. Take the works of Kingsley, and 
Maurice, and Jowett, and their associates ; and last, but 
not least, consider that rare and noble spirit so recently 
removed from the earth — him whom we have reason to 
call brother, — Robertson, late of Brighton. Is it not clear 
that the great mission of these men has been to vindicate 
the genial life of our common humanity against the 
thralldom of exclusive dogmatism and theological caste ? 
They are builders in that Broad Church in whose rising 
walls we too rejoice. The platform that I have marked 
out for myself is too large for me to occupy, I am 
well aware, and I must be content with a few outlines. 
I have thus illustrated my first point that the Catho- 
licity of the Church of the Future is to be reverential, 
appreciating the nobler and purer elements in the High 
Church, in the Low Church, not slighting even the 
ISTo Church, and planting itself with especial love 
upon the essential principles of the Broad Church. 

Let me say now that the Church of the Future, in its 
Catholicity, is to be progressive ; it is to grow out of 
its own root ; it is to branch up in its own liberty 
through every legitimate manifestation of its own 
power under the providential circumstances of its own 



CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE 25 

position. The man who denies that the true catholicity 
is reverential, is like the man who maintains that there 
can be a growth without a root. The Apostle 
asserted the true principle of conservative reform when 
he maintained " thou bearest not the root, but the root 
beareth thee." The true Churchman believes that he 
grows from a providential root, and thus is reverential 
whilst progressive. And he maintains, moreover, that 
the tree must have branches as well as the root, and 
so he is progressive. A man may believe in a root, and 
the root may be a dead one ; and so he may make a 
fossil of himself; or a man may believe in the branch, 
and deny the root, and thus in his haste to grow, have 
nothing to grow from. And if we call a man who 
denies the branches an " old fogy " who wishes to make 
of everybody else a fossil because he stopped growing 
himself, we may coin a new word, and call the impatient 
progressive, " young flighty," who expects things to 
grow without the root, which is the only basis of growth. 
The true Churchman will believe in conservative pro- 
gress and in growth from the root in genial and fruitful 
branches. E~ow what is the true root of the Catholicity 
of the future % Shall we not make this distinction ? 
The catholicity of the past — that is, of the old High 
Church, had its root in priestly legitimacy, growing out 
of the incarnation of God as represented by priestly 
sacraments. The Low Church had its root in the 
verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, and in the doctrine 
of a vicarious atonement, justifying the elect from the 
general curse of total depravity. ISTow the Church of 

2 



26 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

the Future takes its position in the manifestation of God 
in the human soul, especially in Jesus Christ as the 
Son of God. and Son of man, and believes in the 
development of that divine life in every form of 
true humanity. God with man, this is the starting 
principle of faith, and a life divinely human ; this is 
the manifestation of the faith. We believe that this is 
the essential spirit of the Church of the Future. No 
new principle indeed, for we don't believe in any 
absolutely new religion, much as we believe in pro- 
gressive humanity. We maintain that we have the 
same root to grow from, that was possessed by the 
Church of the Fast, and we think that there is at 
present throughout Christendom a strong tendency to 
legitimate true progress which is indicated by a reverent 
study of antiquity. 

The JSTapoleonism of the old world represents a power 
always hostile to such humanity and faith. Down with 
freedom — a curse upon progress — bring back the old 
tyrannies — this is the cry., Such Eapoleonisni is the 
union of base material interest, with military and 
priestly despotism. Napoleonism is now — although we 
trust not for a great while — the great ruling power in 
Europe ; not indeed in England — thank God for that 
exception. This same despotic usurpation sometimes 
shows its head in our America — takes its seat in our 
senates — betrays its temper in Presidents' messages, 
and tries to strangle Young Liberty in our new 
states. We may perhaps see something of its doings 
in the discussions of our tract societies. It has 



CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 27 

many elements in its composition, but it is in the 
main a combination of material interest and wealth- 
worship, with military and priestly despotism. This 
spirit sets its face against all progress, and is every 
where the deadly enemy of all liberal Christianity. 

Now the Catholicity of the Future will not obey the 
dictations of this foul despotism, either in the old world 
or the new. We, as looking forward to the Church of 
the Future, claim our right to grow, although we do 
not claim our right absolutely to construct a new order. 
We believe in growing providentially out of the soil in 
which we are planted. The old Church grew, and why 
should not we ? Even imperial Borne, that claims to 
herself to be the eternal city, and to embody in her 
doctrines the absolute and eternal truth, has been 
developing her principles for thousands of years and 
adding to her creeds and ritual. The recent decree as to 
the worship of the Yirgin, in spite of its superstition, is a 
declaration of the right of progress, and Home is yet des- 
tined to take her place among the progressive churches. 
Ou'r Calvinist brethren too are virtually changing 
their ground. And yet we are told that theology is 
fixed, and that there shall be no new developments. 
Now we claim that we have a right to grow accord- 
ing to our providential opportunities, and we too, as 
well as the old churches, are children of the living God. 

Now take the denominations represented here to-day, 
and there is no reason why every denomination in 
Christendom should not be represented here. We 
would be very glad to see our Roman Catholic brother ; 



28 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

our Calyinist brother, our Methodist brother, especially 
if he would bring here the best of his hymns, which 
are sweet favorites in our own hymn book. "We 
would be very glad to sing with him those blessed 
words : — 

" Love divine, all love excelling, 
Joy of heaven to earth come down." 

"We would welcome them all, although they may not 
choose to come ; and the denominations represented 
here have been brought hither by the force of certain 
convictions, and not by their own arbitrary will. I 
think, for instance, that some of us are called providen- 
tially to be Unitarians ; we have been educated in the 
Unitarian faith, although, perhaps, baptized in the 
Orthodox churches. I am a Unitarian, and I am not 
ashamed to stand up here and say, I believe in one God 
the Father everlasting ; one God in one person (in the 
usual sense of the term — person.) I believe in that one 
God as especially manifested in Christ, the Son of God, 
and the Son of man. I believe in the Holy Spirit, not 
as the third person in the Godhead, but as the spirit 
of the Father, and revealed in and through the Son 
as the witness and comforter in every faithful soul. 
That is essentially my creed, and from this position I seek 
to build up my portion of the Broad Church, and wel- 
come every brother to like liberty. 

We are not to go to Cambridge or to Boston for author- 
ity, nor to rest content with what we have done here. 
Are we to accept a poor clenominationalism, instead of a 



CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 29 

large liberal Christianity ? We mean to grow from the 
root in all the freedom of our own convictions, and in all 
the opportunities of our providential position. And it 
seems to me, that one great mistake has been made in 
our churches — that we do not apply our doctrines to 
our pastoral methods in the administration of worship 
and the education of the young in the Church ; while 
the liberal denominations have thrown oif the old exclu- 
siveness, they will retain a great deal of miserable nar- 
rowness, and persist in retaining the poverty of the 
meager ritual of Puritanism, long after the ghostly ter- 
ror that gave it power has passed away. Calvin pretty 
much finished the work of destruction when he sup- 
planted the beautiful ritual and pastoral comprehensive- 
ness of the Ancient Church by his stern dogmatism ; and 
our Puritan meeting-houses but imbodied the same tem- 
per with fewer enticements from ancient poetry and art. 
"We are not to try to restore the old order of worship, 
but to develop the new. We must do this or our liberty 
is but a name. I do not believe in mere imitation; 
we are to learn from nature and from God, the true 
order of worship and to interest the sensibility and 
imagination of our people, especially of our young 
people, or we have no right to claim true Catholicity. 

I have spoken as long as I ought, and yet I have 
illustrated, and that imperfectly, but two ideas that I 
intended to present to you. I have said that the Catholi- 
city of the Future is to be first reverential, and secondly 
progressive. The third point I merely state ; and should 
there be a vacancy at some other time, I may throw in 



30 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE. AGE. 

a passing word : that the Catholicity of the Church of 
the Future will prove itself by its fruits of divine 
humanity. Had I time now, I might show that the 
true Church of the Future must bring the whole com- 
pass of our spiritual capacities within the influence of 
God's grace, and win mankind to a true fellowship with 
each other in winning them to the faith that works by 
love. This topic would treat of the reconciliation of 
science with faith, industry with spirituality, society 
with devotion, art with religion, and manliness with 
godliness. But I must now say farewell. * 

* For the conclusion of this subject see Appendix. 



THE TKUE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 

BY REV. B. F. BARRETT, 

Of the New Jerusalem {Swedenbargian) Church, Orange, N. J. 

Mr. President : I have been kindly invited by the 
Chairman of the Anniversary Committee of the Young 
Men's Christian Union, to be present on this occasion^ 
and to make some remarks npon the subject just 
announced by the President — " The true basis of Christ- 
ian Union." I am fully aware that it would have been 
more prudent — perhaps more becoming — in an indi- 
vidual bike myself, to have declined than to have 
accepted the invitation — being unaccustomed to address, 
on occasions like this, an audience such as I now see 
before me. But it was not in my heart to decline. I 
sympathize so cordially with this movement of the 
Young Men of New York and vicinity, and with the 
objects contemplated by this Union, and approve so 
heartily the platform upon which this Union is 
established, that I could not stay away from the pre- 
sent meeting. And as a musical instrument, which, by 
itself, makes very inferior music, may, if keyed to the 
right note, sometimes heighten the effect of a whole 
band, so I hope that what I may say will so chime in 
with the thoughts of other speakers as to add something 
to the interest of this occasion. 

31 



32 KELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

I hail this " Union " of the Young Men of your city as 
a movement in the right direction. Its objects as 
declared in the second Article of its Constitution which 
I have jnst read, are " the investigation and develop- 
ment of moral and religions, truth, and the promotion 
of Christian charity and fellowship, irrespective of class 
or sect." These are noble objects. I can hardly con- 
ceive of any more worthy. They are snch as all good 
and charitable people must cordially approve, and 
earnestly desire to promote. 

>- "We meet here to-day as Christian brethren from dif- 
ferent religious denominations, holding somewhat differ- 
ent forms of faith, or views of Christian truth, and each 
one allowed to retain his own honest convictions, and to 
express them with entire freedom ; yet all having in 
view one grand purpose — the promotion of genuine 
charity, or a higher and more truly Christian life. It 
is a spectacle at which the angels may rejoice. I 
regard this meeting itself as a practical illustration of 
my theme. It is one of the signs of the times. It indi- 
cates the dawn of a new and better Era in the Church. 
It proves, I think, that there is a higher ground of 
union among Christians than that of mere belief. It 
shows how men of various beliefs may meet and mingle 
together like brethren, without any surrender or com- 
promise of their honest opinions — all being animated 
by the spirit of charity, and a love, more or less intense, 
for their common Master. Why should they not do 
so ? Why should not Christians, entertaining different 
views of religious truth, still regard and treat each other 



TRUE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION". 33 

as brethren, and thus be united in spirit ? Unity of 
spirit with diversity of belief — unity with variety — this 
is the order of heaven — this is the doctrine I advocate. 
Let me expand this idea. 

The human mind is so constituted that it loves unity 
in all things. But the. most perfect unity is compatible 
with the greatest variety. It consists in no metaphys- 
ical oneness, but in the harmonious arrangement of 
parts that are different. All nature is adapted to this 
constitution of the human mind ; for the whole created 
universe is a unit. Look at the sky by night ; you see 
there innumerable stars, differing in magnitude, and at 
different distances from each other. The planets have 
each a measure of its own, and threads its path around 
the sun with a velocity peculiar to itself. Look at the 
earth by day ; you see it everywhere diversified with 
hill and valley, rock and stream, mountain and lake. 
The forests abound with trees, all differing in color, 
form and size. The earth teems with an endless 
variety of mineral products ; the waters with an end- 
less variety of fishes ; the fields and the air, with an 
endless variety of beasts and birds. And if we descend 
from generals to particulars, the same diversity is still 
observable. Js~o two leaves on any tree are precisely 
alike. Every bird has a feather different from every 
other in the flock, and every flower is painted with a 
hue different from all its brothers. Yet what complete 
harmony — what perfect unity — amid this endless variety 
in the outward universe ! A unity all the more per- 
fect because of this variety. And among men you will 

2* 



34 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

never see two countenances precisely alike ; and even 
the same countenance is made np of an endless variety 
of different lines and different hues, all blending to- 
gether in complete harmony. And so with the noblest 
triumphs of Art; the most perfect poem consists in the 
harmonious arrangement of different thoughts ; the most 
perfect painting in the harmonious arrangement of dif- 
ferent colors ; and the most perfect music in the har- 
monious blending of different sounds. 

The human body furnishes another and admirable 
illustration of the same great truth. It consists of a 
great number of organs, all differing in their structure, 
form, and functions, yet all perfectly united, working 
together in the most intimate, brotherly relations, depen- 
dent all on the pulsations of one heart, and together 
constituting a perfect unit — a complete whole. 

And so it is throughout the whole of God's visible 
universe. Variety in unity is written upon it all. 
Why should it not be so in the moral universe ? Why 
should it not be so in heaven, and in God's church 
on earth ? The great Swedenborg — and his name, I am 
sure, may be mentioned on this platform without excit- 
ing other feelings than those of kindness and respect — 
uttered a great truth, and one of practical moment, 
when he said that Heaven is in the form of a man. 
The expression strikes us oddly at first ; but the mean- 
ing is, that, as the human body is made up of a great 
number of organs, all differing from each other in their 
forms and functions, yet all pervaded by one and the 
same life-blood, and all intimately bound together, and 



TRUE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 35 

working in the most affectionate and harmonious man- 
ner, so heaven consists of a great number of angelic 
societies, all different from each other, holding some- 
what different views of truth, and performing somewhat 
different uses, jet all acting together in the most sweet 
and loving unity, because all are pervaded and animated 
by the Lord's own life — the spirit of disinterested neigh- 
borly love. 

Now suppose this heavenly doctrine brought down to 
earth. Suppose it to be generally recognized among 
Christians as sound doctrine. What would be its legiti- 
mate practical effect ? "Would there be wars and divi- 
sions among us I Would there be enmities and hatreds 
among the various Christian sects ? No more than 
among the different members of the human body. But 
would Christians be all alike ? Would they believe all 
alike ? Would my creed be your creed, and your creed 
your neighbor's ? By no means. There would be the 
same diversity in the forms of our faith that there is in 
the forms of our faces— the same as there is in the forms 
and functions of the several members and organs of the 
human body. Yet there would be as complete and 
perfect union as among the different bodily members. 
They would work just as harmoniously together, and 
feel and manifest the same tender concern for, and the 
same affectionate interest in, each other. This doctrine, 
then, announced by the great Seer of Sweden, concern- 
ing the form of heaven, is eminently a practical doctrine. 
It is one which favors no dead uniformity in the church 
— no perfect agreement in doctrine and ritual, but 



36 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

endless variety, with complete harmony — nnity of spirit 
with diversity of belief. It is in harmony also with 
that divine declaration, "In my Father's house are 
many mansions." And this doctrine will be practically 
acknowledged among men, just in the degree that the 
true Church is established and built up — just in the 
degree that the will of the Father is done on the earth 
as it is done in heaven. 

We look around us and see the Church of Christ 
divided into a great number of sects, each differing 
somewhat from its neighbor in doctrine and ritual. To 
me, this is by no means a sad or disagreeable spectacle. 
It is a thing to be expected. It is proper and right. 
Indeed it is unavoidable in a community where the 
people are both honest and free. "When we consider 
men's different hereditary forms and endowments ; their 
different temperaments and mental constitutions; the 
different manner in which they have been educated; 
the different intellectual, moral and religious influences 
which have surrounded them from their earliest infancy ; 
the different kinds and degrees of religious instruction 
which they have received from parents, books, and 
teachers ; how is it possible, supposing them all to be 
honest, that they should all be perfectly agreed in their 
doctrinal beliefs ? How is it possible that they should 
all estimate evidence or understand the Scriptures pre- 
cisely alike ? The very perfection of God's "Word con- 
sists in the fact, that it contains food for the human soul 
in every possible stage of its development ; that it is at 
once suited to the wants of the wisest angels and the 



TRUE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 37 

most ignorant men. Yet how differently must these 
two extremes of humanity understand the Word ! each 
receiving and appropriating so much and such form 
of truth, as is adapted to its own state. And so among 
Christians, there is, and ever must be, a great variety 
of mental states, some more and others less perfect ; 
and if all are honest, there ought to be a corresponding 
variety in their perceptions of truth, or in their religious 
belief. Belief is not, as some suppose, a mere voluntary 
act. Neither can it be compelled. It is the result of 
evidence ; and the evidence that fully satisfies me in a 
given case, may be quite insufficient to carry conviction 
to the mind of my equally honest neighbor. "What, 
then, shall we do? Hate and persecute one another 
because of our differences of opinion ? or seek for a 
higher and truer basis of union than that of mere belief? 
a basis which will allow different beliefs, and the 
union be all the stronger and more perfect because of 
these differences ? Such a basis is true charity — love 
to the Lord and to the neighbor — which is the great end 
of all doctrine and of all belief. 

To an enlightened and pious mind, then, the great 
number of sects into which the Christian Church is 
divided, is no melancholy spectacle. But to see alien- 
ation, strife, and bitterness among these sects — to see 
them hating, vilifying, and persecuting each other 
because of their doctrinal differences — this is sad and 
dreadful indeed! A spectacle that might well make 
the angels weep ! And what has produced this sad 
state of things ? "What, but the exaltation of faith 



38 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

above charity ? "What, but the preeminence which has 
heen given to the dogma of justification and salvation 
by faith alone f When mere belief is held to be the 
primary and essential thing, no wonder that it should 
be deemed equally essential for men to believe exactly 
right. When error of doctrine is held to be damnable, 
no wonder that all forms of belief deemed heretical, 
should be scrupulously hunted down, and visited with 
the severest penalties. 'No wonder that the powerful 
enginery of ecclesiastical bodies should be brought 
to bear upon heretics, with the view to enforce unifor- 
mity of religious belief, and that bitter strifes and 
hatreds should spring up among different sects. 

Here, then, I conceive, is the grand mistake which 
Christians have committed. It is in making belief 
primary, and life secondary ; in seating religion in the 
head, rather than in the heart. And this mistake must 
be corrected, before the sad consequences which result 
from it can be averted. We must insist on the preemi- 
nence of charity. We must place life above doctrine, 
and regard as of more consequence how a man lives 
than what he believes. And this will soon lead us to a 
j uster appreciation of the true spirit and essence of our 
religion. For what is the essence of Christianity ? Is it 
not a divine spirit dwelling in the heart, sanctifying the 
affections, purifying the motives, softening the temper, 
refining the feelings, and pervading the whole life with 
its fragrant and heavenly aroma? Wherever we see 
the spirit of disinterested neighborly love — the spirit of 
self-denial, humility, meekness, forbearance, gentleness 



TRUE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 39 

resignation, trust, there we see something of the essence 
of Christianity — for there we see the spirit of Christ. 
And all who have his spirit belong to his family and 
household. They are his spiritual offspring, having 
his own image and likeness stamped upon them. 
However they may differ in their doctrinal beliefs, their 
ends are similar. They are really one at heart, having 
one Master, Christ, and acknowledging as brethren all 
those who have drunk of his spirit. 

Here, then, is the true basis of Christian union — not 
in a creed, or in a perfect uniformity of religious belief, 
for this is out of the question ; but in that humble, lov- 
ing, and trusting spirit which is superior to all creeds, 
and which is quite compatible with diversity of belief. 
This is clearly the teaching of our Saviour, as well as that 
of the Apostles. The blessing is pronounced on the 
poor in spirit, the pure in heart, the meek and lowly, 
the self-denying, the peace-makers, they that " hear the 
"Word of God and do it." And we are told, that upon 
those two Commandments, which require love to the 
Lord and the neighbor, "hang all the law and the 
prophets ;" as if true love were the very end and sub- 
stance of them all. And Paul evidently so understood 
it; for he declares that "love is the fulfilling of the 
law," and " he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, 
and God in him,"" for God IS love. And nothing else 
makes us truly Christians but the spirit of Christ dwell- 
ing and operating in our hearts. " If any man have not 
the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." Yes, none of 
his, whatever be his creed, or however pure and abun- 



40 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

dant the truth, he may believe. And " the fruit of the 
Spirit," says the Apostle, " is love, joy, peace, long-suf- 
fering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temper- 
ance." 

Let me not be understood, however, as intimating 
that men's beliefs are of no consequence, or of little con- 
sequence ; or that all religious beliefs are of equal 
value. I mean no such thing. Our beliefs have much 
to do in forming the spirit within us. Some kinds of 
belief induce a cold, sad, severe, and misanthropic 
state of mind. Some sour the temper, and petrify the 
heart. There are some things also essential for a Christ- 
ian to believe, and without which he would not be a 
Christian. It is essential that he believe not only in the 
existence of God, but in the great revelation which 
God has made of himself in the person of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. The doctrine of God manifest in the flesh 
— God in Christ reconciling the world nnto himself — is 
a central truth of our religion, and one which dis- 
tinguishes it from all other religions. The divinity and 
inspiration of the Scriptures is another thing essential 
for a Christian to believe ; for the whole of Christianity 
is wrapped np in the Scriptures ; and to deny or doubt 
their inspiration, is to deny or doubt the divine origin and 
nature of our religion. It is to loosen the bond of union 
between heaven and earth, or between God and the 
human soul. Then, although there are many things in 
the Bible about which men may honestly differ, there 
are also many things — and these the most important, 
too — about which there is no room for an honest differ- 



TEUE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 41 

ence of opinion among candid and intelligent people. 
They are passages which exhibit the spirit of the Bible, 
as it were naked — visible to all eyes. Such, for exam- 
ple, are the commandments of the Decalogue, and all 
those plain precepts which incnlcate the importance of 
disinterested benevolence, purity of heart, a meek, 
resigned, forbearing, self-denying, loving, trustful spirit, 
A life of charity is so often and so plainly insisted on 
in the Scriptures, that, however widely people may dif- 
fer on other points of doctrine, they can hardly fail to 
agree in this — the importance of a good life. The 
necessity of obeying the Lord's commandments, then, 
and obeying them from a religious principle, is another 
thing essential for a Christian to believe. For without 
a belief in such necessity, a man would not shun evils 
as sins against God. "Abide in me, and I in you," 
says our Divine Master. " As the branch cannot bear 
fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can 
ye, except ye .abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the 
branches." Now, to be thus united to Christ, as the 
branch to the vine, is to have his Divine Spirit dwelling 
in our hearts, with a living and operative energy — going 
forth in all the relations of. life, like the odor of flowers 
— perpetually diffusing around us the fragrance of that 
disinterested love, which was so conspicuous in our 
Saviour's life on earth, and which He now imparts, 
from his Divine Humanity, to the hearts of all his faith- 
ful followers. 

I hold, then, that these three — the divinity of the 
Lord (or God manifest in Christ), the divinity of the 



42 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AOE. 

Word, and a life according to the Commandments, are 
central and vital truths in the Christian system. Yet 
even these essential truths may be — yea, must be — dif- 
ferently apprehended by different minds. But if the 
acknowledgment of these fundamental truths in some 
form, as constituting a vital part of our religion, may be 
regarded as an essential condition of Christian union, a 
wide diversity of opinion on other subjects may be 
tolerated, without disturbing the peace and union of 
brethren. Indeed, the union will be more perfect, 
because of this diversity ; for the strongest and most 
perfect union, as I have before remarked, consists 
always in the harmonious arrangement of parts that are 
different, just as the most perfect music consists in the 
harmonious blending of different sounds. Variety in 
unity is stamped on all the works of God. And this, 
I think, must hold true in the moral as in the natural 
universe. 

As I have already mentioned the name of the great 
Seer of Sweden, I will close my remarks by reading the 
following pertinent extracts from this celebrated au- 
thor : 

"There are three essentials of the Church — an 
acknowledgment of the Lord's divinity, an acknow- 
ledgment of the holiness of the Word, and the 
life which is called charity. Every man's faith is con- 
formable to his life — that is, his charity. From the 
Word he has a knowledge of what his life ought to be, 
and from the Lord he has reformation and salvation. 



TRUE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 43 

If these three had been held as essentials of the Church 
intellectual dissensions would not have divided it, but 
only have varied it ; as the light varies colors in beau- 
tiful objects, and as a variety of jewels constitute the 
beauty of a king's crown." — Divine Providence, 259. 

" Mutual love and charity are effective of unity or one- 
ness, even amongst varieties, uniting varieties into one ; 
for let numbers be multiplied ever so much, even to 
thousands and tens of thousands, if they are all princi- 
pled in charity or mutual love, they have all one end, 
viz. the common good, the kingdom of the Lord, and 
the Lord himself ; in which case the varieties in mat- 
ters of doctrine and worship are like the varieties of the 
senses and viscera in man, which contribute to the per- 
fection of the whole." — Arcana Coelestia, 1285. 

" Doctrinals alone do not constitute the external, 
much less the internal of the Church ; neither do they 
serve to distinguish churches before the Lord ; but this 
is effected by a life according to . doctrinals, all which, 
if they are true, regard charity as their fundamental. 
For what is the end and design of doctrinals but to 
teach how a man should live f The several churches in 
the Christian world are distinguished by their doctrinals ; 
and the members of those churches have hence taken 
the names of Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, 
or the Reformed Protestants, with many others. This 
distinction of names arises solely from doctrinals, and 
would never have had place if the members of the 



4:4 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

Church had made love to the Lord and charity toward 
their neighbor, the principal point of faith. Doctrinals 
would then be only varieties of opinion concerning the 
mysteries of faith, which they who are true Christians 
would leave to every one to receive according to his 
conscience ; whilst it would be the language of their 
hearts that he is a true Christian who lives as a Christ- 
ian, that is, as the Lord teaches. Thus one church 
would be formed out of all these diverse ones, and 
all disagreements arising from mere doctrinals would 
vanish ; yea, all the animosities of one against another 
would be dissipated, and the kingdom of the Lord 
would be established on earth." — Arcana Ocelestia, 1790. 

" All doctrinals whatsoever, if so be they are derived 
from the Word, are accepted of the Lord, provided that 
the person who is principled therein be in the life of 
charity ; for to the life of charity all things which are 
of the Word may be conjoined." — Arcana Ccelestia, 
3452. 

This is Swedenborgianism, popularly so called. This 
is the genuine spirit of Christianity. This discloses the 
true basis of Christian union. This is to be the broad 
and sure foundation of that Church of the Future, 
towards which so many anxious eyes are turned, and 
for the hastening on of which so many devout pray- 
ers are uttered. 



WOKSHIP— ITS NECESSITY. 

BY REV. B. PETERS, 
Of Williamsburgh. 

Mr. President : As this is the Anniversary of the 
Young Men's Christian Union, I cannot but regard the 
theme upon which I am called to speak, as one pecu- 
liarly fitting. A union of this kind must be made up 
of young men, who not only appreciate the importance 
of worship, but who, at all proper times, seek its hal- 
lowed influence for the better cultivation of their 
noblest faculties. 

"We should ever bear the fact in mind, that man is 
not only a physical being, but that he also possesses a 
spiritual nature ; and that worship is just as essential to 
his spiritual life as respiration is to his physical. "We 
have lungs of devotion, by whose healthy action the 
vitalizing influence of Christian truth is sent through 
our entire spiritual framework ; giving life, health, pro- 
portion and beauty to the whole. Man is peculiarly 
distinguished by this capacity to worship ; and not only 
distinguished, but exalted and honored thereby. By 
the exercise of this capacity, man holds communion 
with God, the Great Father of all, and the very fact 
that we hold communion with him, is demonstrative 

45 



46 BELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

proof that we are linked to God by ties of the nearest 
relationship. How tenderly, and trustingly does the little 
child nestle in its mother's bosom ! How confidingly do 
faithful children always look to a kind father for aid and 
protection ! And what is worship, but a recognition 
of God as our Father % "What is it but the outpouring 
of the human soul in gratitude to him for his goodness 
and mercy ? "What is it but the man — the full grown 
child nestling in the great Father's bosom ? In child- 
hood we look to our parents for aid and protection. It 
is just as natural for us to do so, as it is for us to 
breathe ; but when childhood passes away and manhood 
takes its place, we then discover the fact that our parents 
are just as weak, and dependent upon a superior power, 
as we ourselves. It is then that the soul goes out for 
that protection which never fails, and in search of that 
arm which " is never shortened that it cannot save." 

Skepticism may deny the necessity of worship, and say 
it is an idle task ; it may even spurn the measure of 
faith which it requires, but that opposition is futile and 
vain. Worship is just as natural, and the desire to 
worship as universal, as the thirst for knowledge, or the 
desire for progress. Have men, at times, failed to wor- 
ship % So have they neglected to seek knowledge, and 
remained in ignorance often for ages. Have they 
refused to recognize God ? So have they spurned the 
law of progress, and remained in almost a fossil — sta- 
tionary condition for centuries. 

Religion is as old as man. It was born with the 
race : Adam inhaled it with the breath of life which 



WORSHIP ITS NECESSITY. 47 

God breathed into him when he became a living soul. 
It has been with the race from that day to this, through 
all time, through all changes, during all revolutions, and 
in all perils. It has found its way through every land, 
and its footprints may be distinctly traced through all 
history. 

Religion, then, is not an invention of priests, but is God- 
given and divine. Man is the only creature capable of 
worshipping. He stands at the apex of this material 
world, and by the gift of this capacity, spiritually 
speaking, his head touches the very heavens. There is 
a profound significance to the words which declare that 
he was "made but a little lower than the angels." 
When he assumes the attitude of worship, he assumes 
the noblest possible. He opens a communication 
between himself and his God. It is to his soul the 
opening of heaven, the emission of celestial light upon 
his earth-born countenance, transforming him into a 
child of light and of love. 

It is said that " clay unto day uttereth speech, and 
night unto night showeth knowledge," and that " the 
heavens show forth God's praise ;" but man is the only 
creature capable of rendering self-conscious and intelli- 
gent worship. Through his lips, therefore, nature finds 
a fit outlet for praise to God. This is done by the 
incentives which nature furnishes. As the waters, 
which are carried in vapor along the heavens, when 
condensed, are thrown down in showers upon the hills 
and plains, are collected in springs and rivulets, are car- 
ried through mountain gorges and valleys, over rocks, 



48 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

and beds of shining pebbles, into the great stream; 
thence roll in majesty and grandeur to its month, and 
are ponred out through that into the great sea ; so does 
the inspiration of the golden sunshine, of the perfumed 
flowers, of the crystal dew of morning, of the song of 
birds, and of the splendor of the heavens, flow through 
a thousand channels into the human soul, to find an 
outlet for praise and thanksgiving through human lips 
to the Giver of all. These are the great incentives to 
worship. 

Worship, which is thus natural to our moral nature, 
and essential to our spiritual existence, should be culti- 
vated by proper exercise. Inaction is as. fatal to our 
spiritual life, as it is to the physical well-being of a 
wanderer among the icebergs of the north. To keep 
the blood in circulation, he must keep his limbs in 
motion. He must rub them, and move briskly about. 
If he allow himself to sit down, indifferent to the result, 
the cold sleep of death will creep over him. The blood 
will freeze in his veins, will congeal in his heart, his eye 
will be glazed, his cheeks become rigid as those of a 
statue, and he will be locked in the icy embrace of 
death. So also with him who neglects the true spirit of 
worship. To be indifferent to our spiritual life, to allow. 
our spiritual faculties to remain inactive, is to invite the 
torpor of spiritual death. There are too many wor- 
shippers who act as though they were looking for an 
open sea ; the atmosphere about them is so cold, and the 
temperature is so exceedingly low ! But worship, which 
is thus a necessity of our nature, cannot be forced upon 



WORSHIP — ITS NECESSITY, 49 

us by any unnatural method. The process of producing 
the spirit of worship must be natural. It will not come 
at the bidding of a wish. We must grow into it, or 
rather it must grow in us. Worship cannot be set up 
in the soul, as you do an organ in the church. When 
that is properly tuned, and the connection between pipes 
and keys is perfect, the bellows inflated, the stops drawn, 
all you have to do, is to sweep your ringers over the 
keys, and it gives forth beautiful, rich music. Worship 
cannot be thus produced. It must come more like 
the rich fragrance of the flower. Fill the soul by 
rejDeated efforts with the right spirit, and worship will 
eventually flow therefrom, as naturally as water from a 
a clear and copious spring. 

We go to the gymnasium to develop physical 
strength. By the use of the various contrivances there 
found, we may acquire a toughness and a strength of 
muscle truly remarkable. What may thus be done for 
the body, should hint to us what may be done for the 
spirit, by repeated and systematic effort 

The church, the assembled congregation, the rich 
tones of the organ, the hymns that are sung, the preach- 
ing, the spirit of devotion, mingled with prayer and 
praise, and rising to heaven like pure incense, are 
helps to develop our internal and higher life. But the 
helps must never be confounded with the thing to which 
they are to help us. They have no value whatever only 
so far as they contribute to the true spirit of devotion. 
You may worship in the grandest cathedral that was 
ever constructed by human hands, you may listen to the 



50 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

rich, tones of the most magnificent organ, hear the 
most impressive prayers and the most eloquent sermons 
that ever fell from human lips, if they aronse not within 
you the true spirit of devotion, they are as empty as 
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. We must remem- 
ber that that which is within us is richer far than any- 
thing of an external nature. It is by virtue of this 
divine gift, that music is rendered delightful, eloquence 
enrapturing, and worship profitable to our souls. Man 
is a sort of divine musical instrument which God has 
constructed ; and there are stops in the human soul 
which he at proper times draws out. There is the 
sweet Kerolophon, the clear Trumpet, and the deep Dia- 
pason tones of truth which God draws forth from human 
lips by sweeping the keys of man's immortal spirit. 

The organ that stands in yonder gallery has no sig- 
nificance whatever, only so far as our souls respond to it> 
and answer to what it says. Suppose the vocal part of 
the organ were removed, and placed in a deep vault 
below this church, and the attachments and keys were 
left where they now are with the connection simply 
extended. The organist might then perform on it, the 
music in the vault might swell and roll in majestic 
grandeur, but it would have no meaning for us, it would 
do us no good. And why ? Because our souls would 
not reecho the great truth which it speaks. The music, 
then, is not in the organ really, but in us ; in the immor- 
tal instrument which God has strung. So with worship. 
It is not in the church, the prayer, the hymn, the ser- 
mon, or the preacher, but it must be in our own souls, 



WORSHIP ITS NECESSITY. 51 

producing spiritual harmony, and giving us increased 
vitality. 

There is a faculty within us that answers to every- 
thing of beauty in Nature, in Art, and in Religion. 
"What emotions are called into being by every scene of 
natural beauty ! By the flowers, in their rich variety 
of hue, fragrance, and form ! By the sunset, in its rain- 
bow tints of glory ! By the landscape, with its moun- 
tains and plains, with its forests and fields, its lakes and 
its rivers ! By old Ocean, that sweeps away as far 
as the eye can see; at times calm and placid, at 
others, its multitudinous waters in wild uproar ; rising 
and sinking, commingling and separating, rolling, swell- 
ing, and breaking upon the rock-bound shore ! present- 
ing a scene of sublimity indescribable by human lan- 
guage! , What emotions are called into life by every 
true work of art ! By statuary, aronnd which genius 
has poured the spirit of its inspiration. By painting, 
that heaves with life upon the canvas. By poetry, 
that has been inspired by the Muses. By music, whose 
notes come as gently to the soul as tones from harp by 
angel fingers swept. J What feelings are awakened by 
the true spirit of devotion ! Worship becomes wings to 
the soul, by which we rise into a higher and purer 
region, and, leaving behind us all that is worldly, we 
soar to the mount of Transfiguration, where our counte- 
nances become changed, as by the light of heaven. If 
man never experienced such emotions, such names as 
Phidias and Angelo, Landseer and Turner, Homer and 
Shakspeare, Mozart and Bethoven, and the names of 



52 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

the long line of prophets and apostles, would have 
passed away from the earth with the dust in which 
these noble spirits lived; and the truths they uttered 
would have remained unspoken. Our highest life does 
not consist in deadening our spiritual faculties, but in 
quickening them. Everything without that is beautiful, 
touches with pleasurable emotion some secret spring in 
the soul. By their magic influence the whole circle of 
our emotions should at proper times be called into 
action. "We have no conception, as yet, of the depth of 
our spiritual being. Those of us who have had the 
largest experience, who have taken the deepest sound- 
ings, know but little of that depth, of the height and 
glory of its possibilities. Not until these bodies shall 
have been swept away by the hand of Time, and we 
shall be all mind — all soul in heaven, shall we enter into 
the full appreciation of this capacity to worship. ISTot 
until then shall we realize that joy and glory which as 
yet it has not entered into the heart of man to conceive. 
Thus have I thrown out a few thoughts upon worship 
and its necessity. These, I trust, the young men of this 
Union, whose prosperity I so earnestly desire, may 
remember and heed. This Union, established in this 
great metropolis, must yet, in future years, exert a wide- 
spread influence over the liberal minds of the country. 
As you grow in numbers, your strength and influence 
must increase, and that influence will find its way out 
through every vein and artery of the nation, forced out 
by this great central heart to the utmost verge of the 
continent. I trust that the members of this Union will 



WOESHIP ITS NECESSITY. 53 

cultivate the true spirit of worship, and though creed 
bound souls may oppose and revile you, be true to 
those higher and diviner principles that are within 
you ; show to the world that the logic of a consistent 
life is irresistible ; pray that assistance may be granted 
you from on high ; that the spirit of Jesus Christ may 
accompany you wherever you go; that you may be 
true to yourselves, to God, and the right, and He will 
give you the victory. 



THE CHKISTIAIST SPIEIT OF REFORM. 

BY HORACE GEEELEY. 

Christian Friends: The topic assigned me for dis- 
cussion this evening is " The Proper Spirit of Reform 
with respect to Public Evils and Personal Vices." 

I have recently* had occasion to urge that the Christ- 
ian is eminently a practical religion ; that it contem- 
plates not so much our intellectual enlightenment as 
our moral exaltation ; that its end is not a sounder faith, 
but an approved state of the affections. A correct faith 
is important because, and only because, it conduces to a 
good life. It is well to study and understand the Bible, 
to attend on the ministrations and observe the ordi- 
nances of the Church, and to practice private or other 
devotion ; because all these are means toward the great 
end of personal, essential goodness ; but if my neigh- 
bor, who neglects all these, is in heart and life a better 
man than I who practice them, than is he truly a better 
Christian than I am. And if there be a Catholic, Bap- 
tist, or Quaker, nay, if there be a Mormon, Mohamme- 
dan, Pagan, or Infidel, whose heart is more imbued 
with love to God and man than yours or mine, and 

* Address at the Anniversary of the Universalist Sunday-schools, May 
11 — two days previously. 
64 



THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT OF REFORM. 55 

whose life is more radiant with good works than either 
of ours, then does he, notwithstanding ours may be by 
far the truer and better creed, stand nearer to God than 
any of us : then is he, in a very important sense, a bet- 
ter Christian than could be chosen from among us. " By 
their fruits ye shall know them," is the divine test, and 
its application is uniform and infallible. And all creeds, 
all dogmas, institutions, ordinances, are to be valued or 
contemned precisely as they are or are not calculated 
to create in the human heart that state of the affections 
— perfect love to God and man — which it is the great 
end of Christianity to create and insure. 

Christianity then is, of necessity, the inexorable foe 
of every wrong, every abuse, every law, custom, usage, 
or institution, that tends to injure or debase mankind. 
If we are called to decide whether slavery, polygamy, 
war, dueling, alcoholic beverages, or anything else, is 
consistent or inconsistent with Christianity, we need but 
ask, " Does it tend, in the average, to promote and dif- 
fuse love to God and man?" and the answer to this 
question furnishes the solution of the problem. 

Christianity is, therefore, a radical, belligerent, inno- 
vating religion. It must advance, and assail, and im- 
peach, and condemn, so long as there shall be evil to 
combat and good to achieve. It is at war with all 
shapes and shades of wrong-doing — with all that seeks 
personal gain or ease at the expense of general well- 
being. Admit that any institution, or custom, or law, 
tends generally to damage or debase a majority of the 
human beings over whom it exerts an influence, and 



56 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE, 

you have decided that Christianity is not only the ad- 
versary of that institution or custom, but that it is its 
uncompromising, persistent, exterminating adversary ? 
granting no truce, and giving no quarter. 

I reject and condemn, therefore, that false logic which 
runs thus : " Slavery, or aggressive war, or the use of 
intoxicating beverages, is justified, because Abraham 
held slaves, and Joshua waged invasive, merciless war, 
and Christ made and dispensed wine," etc., etc. I do 
not admit that Christ ever made or dispensed alcoholic, 
intoxicating wine ; but, even if it were proved that he did, 
I should still say, Whatever he did or allowed, the law 
He gave for my guidance is clear and imperative. " It 
is good neither to eat meat, nor to drink wine, nor to do 
anything whereby thy brother is offended, or is made 
weak," is but an amplification of that divinest precept, 
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
. . . and thy neighbor as thyself." I know that all in- 
toxicating beverages produce far more misery than 
happiness ; that they are potent instrumentalities for the 
demoralization and injury of mankind. Knowing this, 
I know that the divine law commands me not to use 
them, nor countenance their use by others ; and I do 
not believe the divine practice is at variance with this 
law. " Moses, for the hardness of your hearts, permit- 
ted this ; but from the beginning it was not so" supplies 
a short method whereby to refute every assumption that 
any form of chronic injustice, or pandering to groveling 
appetite, is allowed by Christianity, which, as I under- 
stand it, is Absolute Justice, Absolute Morality, im- 



THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT OF REFORM. 57 

pelled by Universal Love. "Whatsoever contravenes or 
comes short of this is so far un-Christian. If, then, I am 
asked whether Christianity condemns this or that, the 
above is my answer. 

But, in farther elucidation of my subject, I will re- 
mark that — 

1. Wrong is no less wrong because it is venerable. 
Prove to me that a thing has been done, and tolerated, 
and even sanctioned, by wise and good men, since the 
dawn of history, and I do not the less earnestly ask, 
" But what are its average influences and effects ? 
Does it, on the whole, tend to make men wiser, better, 
happier ? If not, it is un-Christian ; and the tacit or posi- 
tive approval of all the good, from Enoch to Gerrit 
Smith, will not make it otherwise. 

2. ISTor does the fact that it has entrenched itself be- 
hind laws, and received the homage of rulers, and 
become an institution, alter the case, except to render it 
a more inveterate, therefore a more formidable evil. 
Parents have sacrificed their children to idols, women 
burned themselves on the funeral pyre of their dead 
husbands, in strict accordance with established laws and 
institutions. The Inquisition has torn men in pieces 
with red-hot pincers under the fullest sanctions of 
Church, and State. Christianity was vouchsafed to earth 
primarily to overturn and destroy laws and institutions 
— the conservatism of the Judean Church, the despotism 
of the Koman State. That work it has performed as a 
needed preliminary to its greater undertaking to trans- 
form and purify the souls of the human race. 

3* 



58 KELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

But, while Christianity is the inflexible enemy of 
every form of evil, it is not the enemy of the evil-doer. 
Him it smites bnt to heal. It loves him too well to suf- 
fer him to persist in his vicious, criminal career. It 
calls alike on the drunkard and the drunkard-maker, the 
slave-trader and the slave-breeder, the libertine and the 
victim of his wiles, to repent and amend. If they dis- 
regard the summons, it enforces it by chastisements, as 
with Pharoah's refusal to let the children of Israel go. 
It inflicts penalties, because the selfish, the sensual, the 
abusers of power, will not otherwise be persuaded to 
forsake their evil ways. It inflicts penalties, not merely 
that they may be weaned from their evil courses, but 
that others may be deterred therefrom by the spectacle 
of their suffering. -Its penalties are, therefore, exem- 
plary as well as reformatory ; but they are not vindic- 
tive. They are not inflicted as an end, but as a means. 
Christianity inflicts no evil for evil's sake, but as a 
means to higher and lasting good. 

ZSTow the State is not always able to act so palpably 
in this spirit, because of its imperfections — its limita- 
tions. The State cannot judge the heart — cannot deter- 
mine when the desired state of the affections has been 
attained. It is liable to be imposed upon by hypocritic 
professions of penitence, and lying promises of reforma- 
tion. It may love the wrong-doer intently, but be una- 
ble to trust him. It must shield the obedient citizen from 
the culprit's assaults and depredations, though to that 
end it is compelled to immure the latter in a loathsome 
dungeon ; it must imprison in order to secure ; and 



THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT OF REFORM. 59 

sometimes, being unable securely to confine, it must 
scourge ratber than allow the culprit to inflict wrong 
witb impunity. Herein it prefers tbe lesser of two evils 
— tbat wbicb is preferable even to evil-doers as a class, 
to wbom no penalties can be so injurious as a fancied 
impunity in doing wrong. In short, tbe truly Christian 
State also punishes, to tbe best of its ability, not to in- 
flict evil, but to avert such infliction or reduce it to a 
minimum. 

To the vanquished, the good are ever merciful. The 
brave soldier eagerly presses his canteen to the parched 
lips of his wounded adversary, with whom he exchanged 
deadly thrusts but the moment before. The culprit, 
arrested, disarmed, bound, imprisoned, and completely 
at the mercy of the law and its ministers, is no longer a 
fit object of wrath any more than of fear. Men some- 
times forget this ; God does not. Hence, when the Pro- 
phet Jonah, deploring the failure of the Lord to destroy 
Nineveh, according to his unqualified announcement, 
sat him down, dejected and indignant, to witness the 
completeness of that failure, God says to him (Jonah), 
" Thou doest well to be angry for the gourd, that came 
up in a night and perished in a night ; and should not 
I spare great Nineveh, in which there are six-score 
thousand persons who know not the right hand from the 
left, and also much cattle ?" 

I have no faith in bloodshed as a remedy for wrong. 
I believe in a gentler spirit — one that walks noiselessly 
into the haunts of crime, and says, " Why will ye die ?" 
— which wins the transgressor from the way of eterna] 



60 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

debasement and sin into the way of truth and holiness. 
I believe this is the spirit, and the only spirit, which will 
accomplish this glorious result, and in this spirit it is 
our duty to war against every evil in the land. 

If we could, to-day, make the criminals of New York 
think that they were really loved, that there were those 
who were deeply and earnestly interested in their well- 
being, it would be impossible for them to continue 
criminals. 

If* they could believe that God loved them, and good 
men loved them, and were laboring for their renovation, 
they could not be robbers, and thieves, and murderers 
They hate those against whom they have offended, and 
they hate them on the supposition that they are hated 
in turn. And so long as the periodicals and journals of 
the land tell them that they are thus hated and depraved, 
and past hope of recovery — so long as this logic has its 
influence upon them, and they feel that they are outlaws 
in the Universe of God — they will remain immoral and 
unreformed. 

But when the true spirit— the Spirit of Christ — shall 
irradiate the Christian world — when the laws and insti- 
tutions of society shall be thoroughly permeated by 
that spirit — when men shall go forth manifesting this 
divine love in all the relations of life — when they shall 
take the poor and degraded by the hand, and speak to 
them words of Christian kindness and hope — then, I 
believe, the great work of reform will be commenced 
in a spirit which will prove irresistible. Toward that 



THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT OF REFOKM. 61 

work it is the duty and privilege of the Christian world 
evermore to press forward. 

The genius of Christian Reform wars rather against 
the beginnings, the sources of evil, than their ripened 
fruits. It delights rather in Juvenile Temperance So- 
cieties than in Inebriate Asylums. It would rather 
train children to love honesty and industry, than send 
thieves to the State-prison. It prefers Sunday-schools 
to tread-mills. It rejoices more over one orphan 
snatched from the ways of vice and degradation, than 
over two murderers consigned to the gallows. 

Still, imperfect as society is, corrupting as are the 
influences which beset so large a share of our youth, 
there are and must be transgressors, with whom the 
laws must deal sternly. The land is full of criminals, 
some of them native to the soil, but far more wafted to 
us from the unjust social conditions and decaying civi- 
lization of Europe. With these the law must deal, not 
harshly, but inflexibly. Its penalties should be, not 
savage, but sure. The prevalent cry for blood ! blood ! 
more eagerness to convict, more sanguinary inflictions, 
is mainly uttered by those who cherish and uphold 
grog-shops, and all the lewd, dissolute haunts wherein 
character is sapped and integrity blasted. When the 
community has thus been debauched and demoralized, 
these apostles of butchery seem to know no other re- 
medy than the profuse shedding of blood. But history 
and reason alike assure us that ages of State ferocity 
have never been distinguished for public morality, and 
that a popular tendency to crime has never yet heeu 



62 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

effectively counteracted by a profuse shedding of 
blood. 

Such bloodshed, at all events, is not incited by the 
spirit of Christian Reform. That spirit combines firm- 
ness with suavity, justice with unfailing love. It is no 
spirit of weak compliance, of ready compromise with 
evil, of blind confusion of right and wrong. It simply 
refuses to cast out devils by Beelzebub. It realizes that 
the bad are hardened and confirmed in their evil courses 
by their belief that they are generally hated, by their 
conviction that they are harshly judged and widely 
loathed. It recognizes, in love to G-od, reflected in love 
to man, the true and vital . remedy for the errors and 
woes of our race. It recognizes that we are all, how- 
ever widely separated in intellectual and moral attain- 
ment, " members together of one body," and bows its 
head meekly in response to the great Apostle's search- 
ing question, " Who maketh thee. to differ?" Knowing 
that we have all one Father, one nature, one ultimate 
destiny, it regards punishment but as the pruning of a 
tree of its dead and perverse branches in order to let in 
upon it the vivifying sunshine — that sunshine which 
beams fully upon the human soul in the evangelic 
assurance that God is Love. 



THE TKTTE GBOUNDS OF CHEISTEAN UNION. 

BY REV. A. D. MAYO, 

Of Albany. 

Me. President : 

The people of the United States are now engaged in 
the pursuit of a religion under circumstances that have 
never before appeared. A population of thirty millions, 
seventy-six per cent, of which is of native white extrac- 
tion, twelve per cent, of European and twelve per cent, 
of servile origin, is sparsely sown over an area of three 
million square miles. Only 'six hundred and fifty 
thousand square miles of this area are organized into 
free States ; eight hundred and fifty thousand square 
miles are already in slave States; leaving more than 
half our immense domain still in a territorial condition. 
These thirty millions of people are trying to do a 
greater number of difficult things at once than were 
ever yet attempted by a nation : working to subdue an 
uncultivated continent, and make it fit for the residence 
of man ; and amid the embarrassments of a mixed popu- 
lation, representing every phase of civilization and 
barbarism, endeavoring to construct a republic, which 
means nothing less than the reconstruction of all the 
institutions of society. Four hundred years ago, no 
ancestor of these thirty millions was on any part of 

68 



64: RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

these three millions of square miles ; seventy-five years 
ago three or four millions occupied our Atlantic shore, 
and in more than half the area of our thirty-two 
States civilization is, practically, not fifty years old. 
Of course, such a people, dwelling amid these circum- 
stances, will invariably become a material people. To 
subdue a wilderness, either by hard blows of the arm, 
or the invention and use of machinery, will necessarily 
produce such a concentration of the national mind on 
physical success as will bring every great class to the 
adoption of a strongly material test in every region of 
life. We need no dogma of natural depravity to 
account for the unspiritual character of our country- 
men ; the Americans are a material people because 
they have had no time to become anything better. 
Thus we need not be surprised to find the twelve per 
cent, of our American population in a state of semi- 
brutish barbarism, chained to the ground they dig, 
by ignorance, superstition, and servile associations. 
Neither may we be amazed to behold a large portion 
of our emigrant population in a condition whose only 
hope of relief is in the new opportunity opened to their 
posterity. Neither should we be startled to learn, that 
of the seventy-six per cent, of our native white popu- 
lation, a fearful majority are honestly enslaved by the 
wants, toils, and aspirations, that circle about a material 
success. I make no unheard-of charge, I impute no 
singular depravity to our countrymen when I pro- 
nounce our present condition of affairs a profoundly 
material civilization. With the aid of the higher mind 



THE TRUE GROUNDS OF CHRISTIAN UNION, 65 

of America, working such agencies for good as were 
never before organized into a national existence, we 
have, so far, only given the world a splendid promise ; 
we are still a grossly material people. 

This radical materialism now decides the quality of 
every region of American life. Our native literature 
is chiefly a journalism kept alive by its connection with 
the commercial interests of the country. Our society 
is an aristocracy of wealth — in fifteen States founded 
on the ownership of land and men, in seventeen States 
on the ownership of money. Our government is prac- 
tically the ruling of thirty millions by the represen- 
tatives of a majority of twenty-six millions of white 
people, who believe in the supremacy of the white 
European over every other race, Asiatic, African, 
or ISTorth American. Our business is organized selfish- 
ness : " Look out for number one," is the golden 
rule of Labor in the United States. And, necessarily, 
when such a people attempt to mould a national 
religion, its materialism will become evident in every 
creed and church. 

Probably a full third of the inhabitants of the 
United States neither profess a religion, nor attend 
regularly on the ministrations of any church. The 
remainder are divided among some five-and-twenty 
sects, most of which are of foreign origin ; only two or 
three of native growth. But the creeds of these sects, 
though nominally resembling those of great denomi- 
nations abroad, are quite another thing in the minds of 
the people who accept them here. They are modified 



66 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

by the materialism, the independent habits of life, the 
absence of a State-Church, and all the indescribable 
influences that make us what we are. So the creeds 
of American sects are only a remote indication of their 
condition, mentally or morally. Our religious sects 
are great voluntary parties, rallied on platforms, kept 
together by essentially the same means as the political 
parties are sustained. When a sect is running behind, 
it organizes a " revival." When a number of sects are 
desirous of enlarging their boundaries, they unite in a 
great effort to arouse the people, and divide the con- 
verts among each other. If we look at the operations 
of American sects from a theological point of view, we 
shall be involved in confusion ; their creeds do not 
explain their life. If we look at them as illustrations 
of the national temperament, culture, condition, we 
can understand much that now puzzles both doctors 
and people. 

Now we have in the United States thousands of 
religious men and women, i. <?., thousands of people 
who fully understand our national materialism and all 
its results, and whose highest and sincerest wish in life 
is to spiritualize man, and bring our country and the 
world under the influence of the Law of Love. These 
religious people are found in every sect, and outside all 
sects ; believing all theologies or no scheme of theology. 
We cannot identify them with the few millions of 
Church members ; the Church has a share of them ; the 
" world," so called, i. e., the twenty millions of Ameri- 
cans who are not Church members, has its share. The 



THE TRUE GROUNDS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 67 

chief practical question to this country now is, How can ^ 
we unite these religious people to make head against the 
national materialism, and elevate the Republic to a 
more spiritual civilization founded on the Christian 
Law of Love f 

There are now three prominent methods before the 
people of the United States for accomplishing this pur- 
pose. 

The Roman Catholic Church, which probably ranks 
third or fourth of the Christian sects in the number of 
its adherents, advances its own pretensions to an exclu- 
sive sanctity, and proclaims but one possible mode of 
Christian union : Belief in the Roman Catholic Church. 
Belief in the religious authority of an ecclesiastical in- 
stitution, is her mode of uniting the religion of the conn- 
try against the materialism of the nation. But this pre- 
tension will not be accepted, because it contains an 
assertion of human authority which, if logically carried 
out, would destroy republican institutions, and subvert 
the very idea of the natural rights of man. Spiritual 
authority underlies all other. If the Church of Rome 
has the divine right to give a religion to the people of 
America, all American institutions will practically be 
constructed at Rome ; for, call it what you will, no 
government can preserve the natural rights of man, 
which is made and managed by a people who look to a 
central priesthood as the depositary of religious au- 
thority. This Church cannot bring in those religious 
people who believe in spiritual and political freedom. 
Its only union is the union of one sort of religionists to 



68 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

deny that another sort of religionists are Christians ; 
which is no Christian union at all. 

The Protestant " Evangelical " Church, comprising a 
large proportion of the Protestant sects, has proposed 
another basis of union: The acceptance of a certain 
theory of religion called the "Evangelical Plan of 
Salvation" All who accept this theory of salvation are 
Christians, all outside not Christians. Hence this Pro- 
testant " Evangelical " Church proclaims that there has 
been a perfect union of the Christian Church in the late 
revival " Union Prayer-meetings ;" in its " Evangeli- 
cal Alliance," and its " Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion." It commands America to rally on the platform 
of the " Evangelical Plan of Salvation," and thus save 
each man from eternal perdition, and the country from 
an unchristian civilization. 

But the fatal defect in this, as in the Roman Catholic 
idea, is, that it leaves out so large a part of the Christ- 
ian world. More than half the professed believers of 
Christianity in the world cannot accept this " evan- 
gelical " Protestantism, and are ignored by the Protest- 
ant " Evangelical " Church. This Church may assert 
that this immense number of persons, with the millions 
who do not belong to any church, are out of the pale 
of salvation — that doesn't make it so. And while the 
most complete representative institution of this evah- 
gelicism in America, the American Tract Society, con- 
tinues to sustain the greatest scandal on the Western 
Continent, we may be pardoned for suggesting a revival 
of the Christian graces of modesty, humility and charity 



THE TRUE GROUNDS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 69 

in the judgment of the world by this conceited Church. 
The truth is, this Protestant "Evangelical" Church is in 
the same chronic delusion as its enemy, the Roman Catho- 
lic Church ; it can propose no plan of Christian union 
which will include the Christians of the country. Its 
only idea of union is the conspiracy of a few sects to 
take the kingdom of heaven by violence ; monopolize 
its honors and rewards in this world and the world to 
come ; and either compel the rest of mankind to come 
into il£ arrangement, or be turned into everlasting per- 
dition — a proceeding which the American people, with 
due respect to the undeniable merits of this Church, 
begs leave respectfully to decline, and further to inti- 
mate, that it is not at all alarmed about the eternal con- 
sequences of a refusal to accede to the pretensions of 
an ecclesiasticism that assumes to be God's vicegerent 
to the United States of America. 

There is one more method of uniting the religious 
people of America : Union on religious character, with 
diversity of creed and institution. This method asserts 
that the religious people of America are those who live 
holy lives, founded on love as the supreme principle of 
character. It says to every soul: Consult your own 
spirit, and decide for yourself what you are. If your 
best reason and conscience command you to war against 
selfishness and materialism in self and neighbor, and 
help lift this people up to a spiritual life, come forward, 
and unite with other like-minded men in Christian liv- 
ing and doing good. Your creed is your best wisdom 
concerning life ; give us the benefit of all the light you 



70 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

have on religion and between us all there shall be a 
mutual desire to know the truth. Let there be free 
thought, free expression, free discussion on every doc- 
trine of religion; but let not that individual inde- 
pendence prevent cooperation on the basis of character 
and religious conduct. For religion is first, theology 
second. Let us unite in living for God and man, and 
on the broad field of right-doing rally and move for- 
ward to attack the sin of this nation and of the world. 

The necessity of this plan of Christian Union is 
shown from the fact that the progress of cultivation is 
making it every year more difficult for men to unite on an 
exclusive creed or institution. As people become more 
enlightened, they differ more widely in individual theo- 
ries and personal tastes on a theme so vast as religion. "We 
can have no union on a creed, or an ecclesiastical institu- 
tion in a high state of culture, unless we choose to imitate 
the German method, where men swear fidelity to an 
ecclesiastical establishment, preach its creed, and admin- 
ister its ceremonies to the people, and advocate their 
own private system in books written for the learned ; a 
state of things that can be only temporary anywhere, 
because based on falsehood. 

We are, therefore, driven for our only hope of union 
to a basis of Christian character as the test of religion, 
permitting every soul to answer to its own conscience 
the decisive questions of life. But is it said that belief 
in some creed is essential to this very Christian charac- 
ter ? Nobody denies that opinion is a vital part of cha- 
racter; but when we begin to determine how much 



THE TRUE GROUNDS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 71 

belief, and what dogmas, are essential to a life of love, 
we fall into a confusion that only increases as men be- 
come more intelligent ; since the intellect is the very 
fountain of diversity. But the conscience and the affec- 
tions are the fountain of all the union possible among 
men ; and if the race is to become one family, it must be 
one in the bonds of a loving fidelity to duty. In propor- 
tion as a man puts religion above theology, his sense of 
obligation can be relied on ; and to deny the worth of 
character on the ground of mental difference, is simply 
to be ruled by a mischievous intellectual conceit. 

Is it said a man must believe in Jesus Christ to be a 
Christian ? Believe what of Jesus Christ f is the ques- 
tion that now divides Christendom. As the world moves 
away from the age of Jesus, private opinions about him 
will multiply ; every wise man is now obliged to con- 
struct his own image of Jesus Christ from the records oi 
his life, and the observation of his influence on civiliza- 
tion. But the greatest service of Christianity has been 
to lift society to a higher place, and fill modern institu- 
tions more and more with its own blessed principle oi 
love. So every child now born and educated in a Christ- 
ian land has Jesus Christ wrought into his character, just 
in proportion as his associates resemble Jesus ; and we 
may even conceive that one may grow up into a life of 
Christian love by the force of such private a»d public 
examples, and be like Christ, while his intellect may fail 
to detect the original fountain of that influence that fer- 
tilizes society. Men are not made by their private 
theories, so much as by the spiritual atmosphere of the 



72 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

society in which they live ; and when America has 
realized the law of love, Americans will be educated by 
the spirit of the age into the likeness of the matchless 
character of Jesus, while every mind will form its own 
honest theory of who Jesns was. To deny this, seems to 
me to ignore the chief merit of Christianity in shaping 
the popular life of modern society, and to attach more 
importance to a man's opinion than to the man himself. 
This objection is also disposed of by an appeal to facts 
already existing. We have this union now in all the 
great practical reforms of the day. Men and women 
of all creeds meet on the platforms of these movements, 
act together, and produce great results. We have it in 
private life. Neighbors unite for charitable enterprises, 
people join hands to do any pressing duty, and are not 
harmed, but elevated thereby. This decides the possi- 
bility of union on the basis of love to God and man. I 
suppose it must come gradually, as all good things are 
of slow growth. The practical progress of the idea will 
probably be somewhat in this wise : 1st. Every great 
moral crisis in national or social affairs will concentrate 
good men and women of every creed, or church, on one 
platform of moral effort. 2d. Having thus become 
acquainted with each other's worth of character, there 
will be a growing tendency among those who have acted 
together to compare opinions, and we shall have con- 
ventions for the comparison of views where the love of 
truth will preside, and mutual respect conduct the high 
debate. 3d. The people of many communities will 
soon be driven to the alternative of no public worship 



THE TRUE GROUNDS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 73 

of God, or a church composed of all the inhabitants of 
the place who care to worship ; a church without a doc- 
trinal creed ; a collection of people united to help each 
other, live holy lives, and gain the highest wisdom ; 
where both pulpit and pews are free, and all conspire to 
elevate and spiritualize the private and public mincL 

Each of these things has already been successfully 
done. The petition of three thousand ISTew England 
clergymen, of all existing Christian sects, against the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, was an indication 
of what the Christian Church can do for public morality. 
That petition made " the heathen rage," beyond all the 
late demonstrations of our organized Christianity, and 
was therefore proven to be a "revival" in the right 
direction. In various parts of this country, able think- 
ers have met and compared views on religion ; always 
to the building up of charity, and the enlightenment of 
the people. Many neighborhoods have been already 
obliged to establish a church practically on the basis 
proposed by this method, and such churches are a bless- 
ing to the country. 

Indeed, there are but two obstacles to such union — 
bigotry and wickedness. If all men held their opinions 
in a spirit of reverence for truth and their fellow-beings, 
they would be willing to aid each other in the search 
for divine wisdom. If all men loved goodness better 
than sin, they would find their highest sympathy in 
character. Thus the growth of man in enlightened love 
of truth and spirituality of life must produce this union, 
which I suspect will be all of which we are capable in 

4 



74 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

this world. I do not hope the American people will 
ever worship according to the same form. I do not 
believe there will ever again be so few religions creeds 
as now ; bnt I do hope and believe, as the great desire 
of my life, that the nnion of the good men and women 
of America, for all great practical religious enterprises, 
for the increase of religions knowledge, for that central 
unity of moral purpose which underlies a Christian 
civilization, will come to pass ; and its appearance will 
be the test of the advancing success of the Republic. 

This method of union is our only hope of a vital 
Theology. Our theologians are now the advocates of 
great exclusive sects which fix their premises in unyield- 
ing creeds, and command them at the risk of the penalty 
for heresy to think within their circle. Thus we have 
little independent theology. The divines think as the 
Puritan Fathers worshipped, with their guns stacked 
outside the church, and a watch set to cry out when 
savages appeared. In the solitude of the dustiest library 
these men hear the fierce growlings of the Philistines 
of sectarianism outside, and they cannot write a line 
from their better self, or look at their own thoughts on 
divine things, except at the risk of provoking a theo- 
logical mob, which, led by sacerdotal bullies, drags 
them up to the mount of public observation, fastens 
them to the cross before thirty millions of people, writes 
"Infidel" over their head, and leaves ecclesiastical 
hatred and popular fanaticism to crucify them after the 
approved American fashion. But could men learn to 
rate religion above theology, and encourage free 



THE TRITE GROUNDS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 76 

thought, then the science of divinity would be born in 
America, and we might revise the creed of the ages, 
and, b j the aid of our new experience, mightily help 
the world in its progress towards the highest wisdom. 

And is there any question that such union on the 
basis of character would elevate the religious condition 
of our nation ? What hinders the religious people of 
America now from combining against wickedness in 
that unity of love to God and man which is the basis of 
all true piety and morality? One great obstacle is 
sectarian jealousy. Another is the influence of partisan 
priests, who know if their people are once led up to 
these high elevations of spiritual union, they will be so 
ravished by the inspiring sight, that they cannot be 
marched down hill again to be quartered in the barracks 
of the sects. Another is the intolerance of church cor- 
porations (a mixture of ecclesiastical and commercial 
bigotry much more violent than either alone). These 
sacred corporations love power as well as secular corpo- 
rations, and the worst specimen of lobbying it has 
been my lot to witness in the State-house, at Albany, 
was in behalf of the vested privileges of Trinity Church 
Corporation, in the city of New York. These corpora- 
tions don't intend to let off their employees and follow- 
ers to do the work of humanity, but propose to keep 
them to perpetuate their own overgrown power. We 
all know the disgraceful attitude into which the organ- 
ized Christianity in America has fallen from lack of 
such union. What could not have been done these last 
six months had the religious people united to check- 



76 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

mate the Devil of Despotism in Washington ? Suppose 
a union for the rights of man, such as we have seen for 
the " revival " of the Protestant " Evangelical " sects. 
Why, it could have put President, Cabinet, Court, and 
Congress in the focus of such a moral indignation, that 
these our servants would never have dared to trifle with 
liberty. But who can wonder that our servants have 
"high life below stairs," while we, the masters and 
mistresses, have left the American house in their charge, 
and gone off on a voyage of discovery to verify the 
" evangelical " map of the hereafter. We can have no 
union for practical religion, only a union for "salva- 
tion," meaning by salvation an increase of Protestant 
" Evangelical " Church members. The result of all this 
is that the Government has been left to do an act whose 
enormity and wickedness is quite eclipsed by the little- 
ness of its craft ; while the Revival sends its representa- 
tive, " The American Tract Society," to ISTew York, this 
week, to endorse the publication of Tracts on the duties 
of Sambo and Toney, under the present indefinite cir- 
cumstances of those individuals ; driven out of the field 
of American citizenship by Catholic Taney, only to be 
spirited away to the negro's heaven, by Protestant 
Adams and Bethune. 

But there is to be an end of all this sham Christianity. 
A true union will surely come. The Church sees it 
coming. The most popular side of the Church, the 
Protestant " Evangelical " sects, are obliged to bow to 
a rising spirit they fear to offend. This Church is 
obliged this year to proclaim that her "revival" is a 



THE TRUE GROUNDS OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 77 

" union of all Christians ;" that it is not a ministers' 
revival, but a " business-men's prayer meeting ;" is not 
a fanatical excitement, like those which have kept this 
Church alive in the past, but " calm and matter of fact." 
Neither of these assertions are true in any large sense, 
but they are a tribute to the Christian common-sense of 
the people. Next year the people won't take their 
tribute in these fine words ; but the Church must do a 
good deal more than talk revival to keep its fifty thou- 
sand converts, and retain its best members, already 
wavering, in the quandary to stay and save organized 
evangelicism, or go and save the American people. 
There is a rising Christian public opinion, the blended 
sense of the noblest' part of our country, that will 
sacrifice without benefit of clergy every church that 
makes a creed or an ecclesiasticism the test of religion. 
The Romish Church plead its Catholicism, but long ago 
the jury saw through that plea, and the Roman Catholic 
Church is now in the hands of the sheriff, with no pros- 
pect of executive clemency. The great American Pro- 
testant sects have put in the plea of Evangelicism, and 
the jury are now hearing its cause. The counsel made 
a bad point at the Tract Anniversary yesterday, but the 
American people is slow to anger, long-suffering, and 
easy to forgive the penitent; and if this Church will 
concede the right to think, declare religion to be love to 
God and man, and lead a holy crusade against the sins 
of the people, it will gain a lease of life ; if not, sentence 
of death is sure, and the day of execution will come. 
Another group of sects and societies are now putting in 



78 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

the plea of Liberalism. It is a word dear to the 
American heart ; but the loudest profession will not 
blind the jury. If this new Church makes a creed or 
an institution the test of character, it will follow its pre- 
decessors to death. "When shall we learn that America 
needs none of these churches for her salvation? She 
can use any of them while they serve her purpose ; but 
she needs only a Christianity, broad and profound, 
practical and devout, that can rally all good men and 
women, fill them with a sublime hope for the coming 
of God's kingdom on earth, and lead them against the 
despotism, ignorance, superstition, and materialism of 
the land, as victoriously as the morning light invades 
the realm of sleep and dreams. 

Young men of this " Christian Union," I learn that 
you are smitten with the exalted ambition to represent 
this idea. This, your first public anniversary in the 
metropolis of that State which leads the executive 
power of our country, is to me significant of the times. 
I know not whether it is to be given to you to lead in 
this great ingathering of the forces of a spritual, against 
a material civilization. It is a post to which only the 
noblest may aspire ; for the way is long and the toil is 
hard, and foes slumber in the future more dangerous 
than those that now beset your early march. But God 
help you to try ; and whatever comes of your effort 
be assured a watchful Providence will permit nothing 
worth saving to be lost, but will mould the permanent 
results of your best endeavor into another stone, and 
lay it on the rising walls of that Temple of Humanity 
which abideth for evermore. 



WOMAN m CHKISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 

BY THOMAS WEXTWORTH HIGGTNSON, 

Of Worcester, Mass. 

Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen : — Count- 
ing this invitation as an honor, as I do, I count the sub- 
ject assigned me, " Woman in Christian Civilization," 
as a greater one. But hard as it is to crowd into a few 
moments, anything worthy of saying on that question 
which is agitating this age as no other has ; that ques- 
tion which has so lately enlisted, in your own city, the 
keen insight of Mr. Brady, the strong rhetoric of Dr. 
Chapin, the culture and the chivalry of Curtis, and the 
voice of Lucy Stone, that voice " gentle and low, an 
excellent thing in woman," yet strong enough to have 
been heard from Maine to California, and across the 
Atlantic : hard as this is, I am proud to be asked to do it. 

I remember once a certain preacher in Massachusetts 
thought it necessary to explain, on one occasion, why he 
made special mention of woman's existence in his pulpit, 
contrary to the usual proprieties of the place. " It is 
because," said he, " the fact is, that among the redeemed, 
up to this date, the immense majority are undoubtedly 
women." I expected-some magnificent conclusion from 
premises so striking, and unquestionable, and was a 

79 



80 .RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

little disappointed when the reverend gentleman went 
on at last to demonstrate, that the church, to which he 
ministered, was greatly in need of a central chandelier ; 
and perhaps the ladies of the congregation wonld be so 
kind as to get up a little Fair, and pay the price by pin 
cushions. I speak from the same premises, I trust with 
larger conclusions. 

He is idle, she is idler, who attributes to any tempo- 
rary excitement the great and gradual movement in 
these times, which assigns to woman her equal position 
in the future, as man has had his predominance in the 
past. For want of this movement, for ages, a minor key 
of sadness has run through all the words and works of 
woman. No man can ever speak of the position of 
woman so mournfully as she has done it for herself. 
Charlotte Bronte, Caroline Norton, and indeed the ma- 
jority of intellectual women, from the beginning to the 
end of their lives, have touched us to sadness even in 
their mirth. And the mournful memory of Mrs. Sid- 
dons, looking back upon years when she had been the 
chief intellectual joy of English society, could only 
deduce one hope, " that there might be some other 
world hereafter, where justice would be done to 
woman." 

It is not alone in the great tragedies of life ; it is 
more in the unseen and private sorrows ; it is more in 
the prosperous classes than in the unprosperous ; it is 
more , among women who make no complaint, than 
among the complainants, that we see the- wrongs in the 
position of woman. The life, the ordinary life of single 



WOMAN IN CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 81 

women in the community — their life from eighteen 
years to their wedding clay, what is it in tens of thou- 
sands of cases, but one long petty tragedy ! A life re- 
puted blameless indeed, but also aimless ; a life without 
a noble hope, without a large enjoyment, without an 
earnest purpose ! It is impossible that the soul should 
be satisfied with what society gives young girls as the 
solid material of their lives, dancing parties, a crochet- 
needle, the last new novel, and the occasional amateur 
manufacture of rather indigestible sponge-cake. The 
soul demands an object > or it dies. This emptiness of 
life, to unmarried women, has led again and again to 
insanity and premature decline, for which the doctors 
could find no sufficient reason. Every man knows it, 
whose position has given him the confidence of woman. 
Again and again have I been asked by women, almost 
with tears in their eyes — persons who had everything 
that fortune could give them — " Do not merely preach 
to us resignation, but point out to us some object in 
existence." How hard it was to answer. 

What is education, what all the varied culture of 
modern times to a perplexity like this ? It is only giv- 
ing wings to a caged bird. I remember a young friend 
of mine, now a happy and successful school-teacher, 
who was asked by a companion some years since, " why 
it was she was so unwilling to leave school ?" " I don't 
want to leave school," was the answer, " because then I 
shall not have anything to do." " Nothing to do !" was 
the astonished answer. " "Why can't you stay at home, 
and make pretty little things to wear, as other girls 

4* 



82 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

do j" It was a correct description. " It is a sad thing 
to me," said another accomplished female teacher, " to 
watch my fine girls after they leave school, and see the 
intellectual expression die out of their eyes, for want of 
an object to employ it." I once heard a mother say, 
" I have not thought much on this subject, but I know 
this : my daughters are more gifted than my son's, more 
cultivated, have higher aspirations, yet it seems to me, 
when I think of it, that my girls live, all the year round, 
very much the sort of life that my boys do when they 
come back from college, for a few weeks of relaxation. 
I like it well enough in my boys for a week or two at a 
time, but I should be ashamed to have brought them 
into the world if they lived so permanently." 

Again, and again, in different forms this problem 
comes before us. It is a transition age. The old em- 
ployments of woman are passing by. Lowell does the 
work of the spinning-wheel. The sewing machine is 
annihilating the needle, and society is to solve a new 
problem in the position of women. I pass over the 
darker aspects of her existence. I say nothing of the 
crime which fills our streets, of domestic tyranny and 
sensuality — of the woman whose life, at first happy, is 
wrecked by the baseness of manhood, and who then 
turns to the laws which should protect her, and finds 
the law worse than the husband. For it is but a few 
years since laws were repealed, of which that Vermont 
statute was a specimen, which confiscated to the State 
half the property of every childless widow, thinking that 
the State could probably find better use for it than she. 



WOMAN IN CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 83 

But I speak now rather of that more common position 
of the woman, who, cradled in comfort or luxury, finds 
no place in life for her energies, and has to take her 
chance for existence in the choice between a husband 
and nothing ; and as some one has said-^that is often a 
chance between two nothings. And yet these women 
thus wasted and weary, what is there in existence which 
they might not claim % What place in the universe that 
they might not nobly fill ? 

As women are now educated, their whole lives are 
dependent and accidental. I said to a physician once, 
speaking of a certain woman who had been under his 
care, " How great she was in that emergency." " Don't 
you know," said he, "that all women are great in 
emergencies?" And so it is ; they are. But emergen- 
cies do not come to all ; and those who are thus great 
when they come, are not educated to create them. 
I take it, every woman that ever lived had wings en- 
folded in her being, and it was only time and circum- 
stances which decided whether she should prove an angel 
or a moth. Every woman becomes a Madonna by the 
cradle of her first-born child ; and other things may en- 
noble her also. I have seen a fashionable beauty who 
seemed as if she thought butterflies were only made that 
she might imitate them in the waving lustre of her gar- 
ments ; I have seen her forget all that gorgeousness, 
and throw herself down in the miry street to save a 
beggar-child from the horses of an omnibus. From the 
other extreme of society, I have seen a woman who 
seemed utterly lost and degraded — I have seen that 



84 "RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

woman mount guard like a lioness in defence of her 
younger sister, not yet fallen like herself. It is so, often ; 
the heroism and power are there, only grant the emer- 
gency. But this is not enough. 

"We do not educate a man to be great in emergencies 
only ; we ask that he shall have manhood in him, that 
he shall create his emergency for himself; that he should 
not wait for victory to come to him ; he should, like 
Napoleon's marshal, be " victory organized." We 
must train woman to meet the same demand. 

A good instance of the reserved power in woman, has 
been her demeanor during the civil wars in Kansas. I 
asked, as you did, again and again, from the returning 
Kansas emigrants, " How do the men bear themselves 
in this scene of danger ? still more, how do the women 
bear it ?" And the invariable answer was, " they bear 
it even better than the men." Afterwards it was my 
fortunate lot to visit Kansas when the civil wars were 
but just subsiding, and to see these women before the 
glow had faded off their cheeks, and the heroism had 
left their eyes. I saw the very woman who taught her 
school in the city of Lawrence, on the day of the Mis- 
souri invasion, and kept the children quiet at their books, 
the very next door to the burning hotel, because they 
were safer inside than out. I saw another young girl 
who had gone alone among an army of two thousand, 
encamped around the ruins of her homestead ; she went 
to save some of her father's property, and returned unin- 
jured, and she told me the story above the still-smoking 
embers. I saw the calm women, who, the Sunday pre- 



WOMAN IN CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 85 

vious, were engaged in making bullets, in sight of that 
same invading army. I saw a woman who had 
remained in her lonely prairie dwelling, with her sick 
children after it was necessary to board up the lower 
windows, leaving no communication to the house, but 
by a ladder to be lowered or withdrawn, as friends or 
foes might come by — remained there till she was burnt 
out by the assailants. I saw these women, and I heard 
but one testimony in all that region ; " the women, in a 
crisis like this, are braver than the men." 

That crisis has passed, the immediate danger is over, 
and how have the men of Kansas reasoned on the pro- 
per sphere of woman % Have they, after her work was 
done, bowed courteously to her, as we ministers who 
have fairs to pay for chandeliers, bow the ladies out 
courteously, and put the money in our pockets \ Did 
they dismiss them thus? If they did, it, at least, was 
very near being otherwise. For it is only a few days 
since I received a letter from the Secretary of the Lea- 
venworth Constitutional Convention, in which he says : 
" A half dozen more votes would have turned the scale, 
and women would have shared the suffrage of men of 
Kansas, as they have shared their dangers before." That 
was their experience of woman. 

Now, we talk of Kansas as a battle-field, but I tell you, 
New York this night has within its borders a thousand 
battle-fields more momentous than Lawrence or Ossa- 
watamie. Women must claim, here as well as there, 
her full culture, her full remuneration, legal rights, 
political enfranchisement. There is not a woman who 



Ob RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

hears me, who cannot, if she wishes, in addition to those 
home duties which God has put first for her, enlarge her 
soul until she does even those better, by participation 
in cares and objects outside. There is not a woman 
here who cannot find in the existing position of woman- 
hood an object to work for. "We see how much is 
already gained. But how has it been gained? By 
work ; and that work done with no pay but hard names. 
Yet every concession only suggests a further demand. 
What is it to give woman a schooling, if you make her 
education stop where the real education of her brother 
begins ? "What is it to give woman wider employment, 
unless in this employment you proportion her wages to 
her work, and don't give her work harder than man's 
with one quarter of the remuneration? What is it 
to woman, if better laws are passed here and there for 
her protection, if still the clergyman binds her to obey — 
thank God she don't keep the pledge — and the lawyer 
assures her that man and wife are one, and that one is 
the husband ! 

To reform these things the impulse must come from 
woman herself. Men judge of women as they per- 
sonally see them. How can you expect a man to honor 
womanhood, if you do your utmost to dishonor it by 
wickedness or frivolity? How can you expect any man 
to labor for the elevation of those who spurn at the 
very laborers, and take pains to explain to the world, 
that they themselves, at least, are not " strong minded ;" 
as if anybody supposed they were ! How can any man 
reverence womanhood beyond the personal experience 



WOMAN IN CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 87 

of his own household ? I do not need to visit a man to 
see what his domestic relations are ; I can talk to him 
about the rights and powers of woman, and his answer 
gives me the true daguerreotype of his sister, wife, 
mother, daughter. How can he get beyond the standard 
of Thackeray — every woman weak or wicked — if he can 
only judge from a wife, who knows nothing in the 
universe beyond her cooking-stove; and a daughter 
who has not much experimental acquaintance w T ith 
even that ? 

On the other hand, what tales of mesmerism or 
alchemy can fitly symbolize the power of a noble 
woman over him who loves her ? The tale of Undine 
is only half the story. Dry den's story of Cymon and 
Iphigenia needs to be placed beside it. Woman not 
merely finds her own soul through love, but gives it to 
her lover. Woman has this mighty power — when will 
she use it nobly ? There are thousands to-day who 
are looking out of their loneliness, their poverty or 
their crime, for the new age, when women shall be 
truer to themselves, than men have ever been to 
women ; the new age of higher civilization, when moral 
power shall take the place of brute force, and peace 
succeed to war. 

A new age is coming for woman, as sure as the law 
of gravitation. Every demand now made by the strong- 
est advocate for her equality will be fulfilled, What is 
now called fanaticism will one day be simple common 
sense. Every claim for her culture, every desire for 
her employment or enfranchisement ; it is all coming, it 



88 KELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

is all there, none of us can prevent it, while every 
woman can do so much — more than any man — to pro- 
mote it. And oh, if my voice, a stranger's voice, can 
reach one woman's heart within these walls, may this, 
at least, be the result of its imploring, that she who 
cannot yet join in the new claims now made for woman, 
may, in bare justice to her sex, remain neutral. Let her, 
if she will lift no hand for helping, at least, have the 
* vx generosity to refrain from opposing those, who, this day, 
in a neighboring hall, are casting down reputation, 
friends, time, wealth, casting them all down, that they 
may be made living stones in that temple of the future 
of " Woman in Christian Civilization." 



CHKISTIAN UNION. 

BY KEY. C. MIEL, 

Of France. 

My Christian Brothers: — It has been kindly pro- 
posed to me to address yon either in French or English. 
Although my knowledge of your language is very im- 
perfect, I will endeavor to speak it so that all may 
understand me. Never mind if my words sound bar- 
barous to your ears ; I shall be satisfied if they find some 
echo in your souls. 

Now, brothers, of what shall I speak to you who have 
been until this moment unknown to me? And first, 
where am I ? whom do I address ? This is, I am told, 
an anniversary of the Young Men's Christian Union. 
Christian Union ! but is not this the sweetest of my 
dreams, the most cherished of my thoughts, the happy 
conclusion of my trials, the great work to which I am 
anxious to devote all my faculties and life ? Oh, thank 
God ! thank God ! there is now, there is here a Chris- 
tian Union ! 

I have considered that multitude of sects which are 
called Christian ; and when I looked amongst them for the 
sign by which Christ intended his disciples to be distin- 
guished, what did I find? Instead of love which unites, 



yO RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

creeds which divide. " No," they say, " Christianity is 
not love, love for all, it is faith ; faith here to this, there 
to that, and somewhere else to some other thing. 
Christianity is orthodoxy. And when I asked what is 
orthodoxy, the answer was always the same. " Ortho- 
doxy is my doxy ; heterodoxy is the doxy of others." 
And the practice also was the same ; orthodoxy every- 
where religiously hating, cursing heterodoxy : each sec- 
tarian endeavoring to hollow a hell for the one who 
dares to think differently from himself, and sometimes 
not satisfied with eternally damning a brother Christian, 
but persecuting and torturing him to the death for the 
greatest glory of God! And that would be religion, 
that would be Christianity ! 

No, no ! Christ has taught it, and you, brothers, have 
understood it, otherwise. 

Religion is union ; Christianity is Christian union ! 

Union ; that is to say, a common tendency towards a 
common centre, the Infinite Being from whom all pro- 
ceeds and to whom all returns, the one great God ! 

Christian Union ; that is to say, a common aspiration 
of all Christians together to the Supreme Perfection, 
and an incessant endeavor to attain that perfection 
according to the "Word of the Master himself: "Be per- 
fect as your heavenly Father is perfect." 

What ! can man ever attain the infinite perfection of 
God ? No ; but he can approach it every day more 
and more. The law of his life is a perpetual ascent 
towards the permanent principle of all life; a per- 
petual growing in God ; and finally, a union with God ! 



CHRISTIAN UNION. 91 

And as no union is possible without love, as love is 
the very energy which alone can accomplish union, 
therefore, all Christianity is resolved in one word — 
"Love." Love God with all the powers of your soul, 
and love every man as yourself ; for every man is like a 
part of yourself, and must at last become, like you, one 
with God : " Father, let them be one, as thou art in me 
and I in thee ; let them be one in us." Such is religion, 
such is Christianity. 

Let us not confound it, as so many do, with the vari- 
ous forms under which it has been disguised. They are 
the work of man ; they must die with him ; they are 
the garments which time wears away, but the spirit 
lives for ever. The Divine germ ever buds anew, and 
knows no decay ; and it is thus understood that Chris- 
tianity is unalterable. It is the first and last law of 
humanity ; for, beyond God, there is nothing which can 
be proposed to man as his end. For that great com- 
mand of being perfect like God can never be exhausted, 
neither in this life, or throughout all eternity ; but man 
must go from truth to truth, from justice to justice, from 
virtue to virtue, from love to a deeper love ; always 
wiser, always purer, always holier, always happier, 
always nearer to his God, never stopping on that royal 
way. 

And that great destiny of each of us, my friends, may 
be said to be also the destiny of society. Christ is not 
only the Saviour of man, he is the Saviour of mankind ; 
and mankind, like man, must ascend to God, that is to 
say — to perfection, to union, by an endless progress, by 



92 KELIGI0US ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

a perpetual development. As man must become one 
with his brother, so families with families, so nations 
with nations must become one, and, ultimately realize, 
under the eye of God, an immense unity. 

It is true, that divine work of the infusion of the 
Christian Spirit into society is slow, very slow. 
Eighteen centuries have passed, O Christ, since thou 
proclaimedst thy sacred doctrine, since thou sealedst it 
with thy blood ! Eighteen centuries since generations 
transmit it to each other, and profess to believe in it, 
and, alas if we look to human societies, even in the 
most enlightened countries, do not we find them still 
half governed by pagan laws ? "Where is that equality, 
that liberty, that fraternity, that solidity which thou 
taughtest to be the irrefragable law of the human race ? 
What do we see almost everywhere but the tyrannical 
domination of a few and the servitude of all others, 
oppressed either in the name of force, or under the 
insolent pretext of a superiority of nature ? What do 
we see in the old continent but kings, emperors, pontiffs 
despots of all names, leaning upon the world with all 
the weight of their pride and rapacity? What do we 
see even here in this land of promise, whose destiny is 
so wonderful, if not betrayed — Avhat do we see in the 
United States of America but millions of men the pro- 
perty of a few masters, to whom they belong as their 
cattle, by whom they are treated as their oxen, and 
how often not so well ? Oh, Christ ! hew long the poor, 
the oppressed, the cursed, the slaves, both of soul and 
body, how long all these our brothers, thy brothers, 



CHRISTIAN UNION. 93 

must they be trampled under foot ? How long must 
they wait for relief and deliverance ? shall the cry 
of their distress always vainly arise to Heaven ? 

]S"o ! the time at last is at hand. Listen, hark ! in the 
depths of society that mysterious murmur which an- 
nounces resurrection ; hark, that noise like that of 
chains which break ; look, how thrones shake, how all 
tyrants, political and spiritual, tremble and wither with 
affright, as by a presentiment that their end is near. 
Remark, on the other side, how the weak raise their 
heads, how all people begin to feel they are indeed 
brothers, how they league in secret against their oppres- 
sors; how, preparing themselves for the great and 
decisive battle of liberty, they startle with hope and 
joy, for they know the future is theirs. Yea, in this 
hour the horizon is dark with tempest ; but look afar to 
the East, and you will perceive arising the luminous 
cloud which foretells the coming of the Kingdom of 
God! 

You have been amongst the first to discern it, young 
men. Is not this very meeting a beginning of its 
realization ? I congratulate you upon it. Oh ! happy 
are you, who are called to precede the generation in 
their way towards the blessed unity ! Happy are you, 
who from your early years have enjoyed the liberty of 
the children of God! Happy are you, who, without 
any serious obstacle either from men or institutions, may 
pursue your course towards the true, the good and the 
beautiful ! Happy are you, who, have such guides as 
those who stand upon this platform ; so wise as to 



94 BELIGIOUS ASPECTS^ OF THE AGE. 

know surely the way, so liberal as to show it to you un- 
hesitatingly, so virtuous as to walk manfully in advance 
of you. Oh ! how different it is in other countries I 
might speak of! There every soul is born a slave. 
Education tends to enslave it sliil more ; to degrade it, 
so far as to make it love its slavery, embrace its chains. 
Oh ! is it not a wonder that a poor human being, now 
and then, should, in such conditions, succeed in freeing 
himself. A simple aspiration for liberty he must hide 
as a shameful crime. No one to guide him, no one to 
encourage him ; but obstacles of all kinds, sacrifices of 
all that, after truth, is dearest to a noble heart. Ah ! 
brother allow me to say so ; I can tell of that slavery of 
the soul, for I have borne it almost thirty years of my 
life. 1 can tell of the anguish of such a birth to liberty, 
for I have been five long years suffering it. Oh ! how 
long, how rough, how wearying has been the road to 
join you ! Now, at last, we are together, God be 
praised. Let us go on firmly, not looking backward ; 
let us advance, as far as in us lies, the grand work of 
our Christian Union. 

In the first age of Christianity, you are aware what 
served the most to propagate the Gospel — what most 
struck the heathen. It was not the marvels done by 
the Apostles ; it was not the admirable constancy of the 
martyrs. It was the love of the New Christians for 
each other. " Look how they love one another," said 
they. Let us endeavor that all those who do not yet par- 
take of our ideas may say the same of us : " Look how 
they love one another." More than that, let us endea- 



CHRISTIAN UNION. 95 

vor, that they may say : " Look how they love God ; look 
how they love the truth of God ; look how they love all 
the children of God ; look how they love all mankind.' 7 
If so, brothers, courage. The coming generation 
belongs to us. 



INFLUENCE OF THEOLOGICAL THEOEIES 

UPON THE PRACTICAL CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
BY HENRY W. BELLOWS, D.D. 

Mr. President: I cannot promise any special ad- 
herence to the subject which I am announced to discuss ; 
for I desire to receive the inspiration of my speech, 
more from the immediate presence of this audience, 
than from the reflections of my own study, and shall 
endeavor to reflect, as far as possible, articulated and 
duly emphasized, the under-thoughts of those whom I 
am here to address. 

I suppose everybody is asking inwardly : What is this 
new movement which we represent? What is it we 
are trying to do ? What has brought us here ? What 
is it that makes this collection of Liberal Christians, so 
called, different from the ordinary collections of Christ- 
ians which the current week has brought together! 
What is the ~New York Young Men's Christian Union ? 
Why are we interested in it ? What does it stand for ? 
The Young Men's Christian Union is a representative 
body ; perhaps it does not yet very well know itself 
what it stands for. I take it, Liberal Christianity has 
not yet come to a full understanding of itself — what it 
is and what brought it here. For it did not come by 

9fi 



INFLUENCE OF THEOLOGICAL THEORIES. 97 

• 

man ; it came by God, and we humbly sit at the feet of 
the Holy Spirit to inquire what it is God would have 
us to do as liberal Christians. 

For one, I do not wish to be separated from the great 
body of the Christian Church. I don't like a peculiar 
position and situation ; to be cut off from a larger and 
joined to a smaller body, with which social communion 
is denied. I don't like that attitude ; but here I am, 
and not by any will of my own. I am here by the 
pressure of certain thoughts, and convictions, and expe- 
riences, and by the will of God. I can't be otherwise 
than here ; and, so help me God, here I must stand and 
inquire what it is that God means for me to do as a 
liberal Christian. 

There is another association of young men — The 
Christian Association. Why have you come out from 
that body ? Why do you not go and join yourselves to 
that association? And more generally still, why have 
not the Liberal Christians whom this Union represents 
been content to merge themselves in the general reli- 
gious life of this country, and to act with the vast 
majority of the sober and devout people of the land, 
instead of coming out from among them, and having 
churches, organizations, aims, and ends of their own % 

You do not go for the same reason that we do not 
join ourselves to that great evangelical body which that 
association represents, because we are a new birth, and 
represent new ideas, which we have not contrived, but 
which God has forced into our souls, and made us repre- 
sent. ¥e do not think as they think, and therefore we 

5 



98 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

cannot be with them. Now, how is it that we do not 
think as they think, and feel as they feel ? They are 
the representatives of that fixed condition of religions 
things in which the Chnrch has been staying, or trying 
to stay, for centuries. They are working upon that old 
platform, and pronounce it whole. For many purposes 
it is whole. All persons who can comfortably and 
intelligently stand upon that platform, God not pntting 
into their hearts a sense of its narrowness, may find an 
honest and happy foundation there, and are bound to 
stand there just as long as the old will hold them ; and 
only to come on the new, when they cannot remain 
there any longer. This gives me sympathy for the old 
and that which represents the Young Men's Christian 
Association. 

I am not going to be so silly as to ignore the great 
body of Christendom ; nor am I so foolish as to suppose 
all they believe is error. I think what they stand on is 
true ; but what they say they stand on is not trne, or, at 
least, I do not see it to be true. They are not troubled 
with the donbts that have troubled us. They are able 
to believe two things, which are called the two funda- 
mentals of Protestantism — -the absolute authority or 
plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, the mysterious 
efficacy of the blood of Christ. I suppose these ideas 
are really very important ideas, and if yon can get 
down to the root of what they mean, you can get at 
what we mean. 

But why does the Christian world cling to the doc- 
trine of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, and 



INFLUENCE OF THEOLOGICAL THEORIES. 99 

the blood of Christ as efficacious in man's salvation? 
It is on account of its distrust of human reason, in 
short, of the human soul. It says, the human soul is 
dark and ignorant. Reason is merely human ; there is 
no reliance upon it ; we must have something that we 
can rely upon. If reason is dark, and unsafe, and 
untrustworthy, and all that man knows of himself is 
purely human, then they are right in saying they must 
have something outside the soul. If I distrusted the 
soul of man; if I regarded reason as a mere human 
thing, I should cling with the grip of death to the pie- 
nary inspiration of the Scriptures. I must have some- 
thing to rely upon ; and therefore this clinging to the 
Bible as something truer than the human soul itself, is 
a sound instinct of orthodoxy. And until it comes to 
trust the human soul, and believes that reason is divine, 
and not human, and that which can be depended upon 
in our moral and intellectual nature, the world wil] 
stand by the inspiration of the Scriptures, and it 
ought to. 

I need not remind you that this doctrine was made a 
fundamental doctrine when that other doctrine which 
for ages had performed its duty and stood for it, was 
outgrown, and abandoned by Luther — the infallibility 
of the Pope, or of the Church. 

But what is the one spiritual necessity which both 
these shapes of plenary inspiration express ? A neces- 
sity of some final and complete authority in religion. 
So long as Christians had the infallible Church, they 
could dispense with the unerring Scriptures. But is 



100, RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGfr. 

there not a third kind of plenary inspiration which is more 
radical than either of the others — a purer, more sacred, 
and more credible sort — which must as inevitably take 
the place of the second, as the second did of the first, 
namely, a faith in the plenary inspiration of the sonl, as 
the voice, the temple, the presence, the word of God ? 
Under the names of reverence for reason, the dignity of 
hnman nature, the sacredness of humanity, is contained 
the great truth, ever struggling to express itself — always 
inspiring faith in Church and Bible, and giving all the 
support they had to every claim to infallibility of either, 
that God is in man • that man's moral instincts, intel- 
lectual mould, spiritual senses are infinitely wiser than 
he is — being of God, and the nearest and best account 
of God — and indeed infallible in what they say of God. 
It is upon man's secret reverence for his own nature, the 
unconscious sentiment of God in his soul, that the infal- 
libility of the Church really rested, as the plenary inspi- 
ration of the Scriptures still rests there. Man's moral 
and spiritual nature conferred infallibility upon the 
Church— plenary inspiration on the Scriptures. It is 
only by confounding reasoning with reason, the critical 
with the creative powers in the soul, the personal facul- 
ties with the unpersonal essence, that we learn to call 
and think reason, or the soul, human, that is, limited, 
fallible, uninspired. It is God who is infallible, who is 
the reason we pronounce divine ; it is God who is the 
soul of our souls, that makes the true plenary inspira- 
tion a faith in the eternal, changeless moral instincts in- 
tellectual perceptions, and spiritual affections of the soul. 



INFLUENCE OF THEOLOGICAL THEORIES. 101 

While the Church represented humanity better than 
she represented herself — that is, was the embodiment of 
the Holiest in us — she rightfully enough claimed infalli- 
bility, and had her claim allowed. When^he divine in 
man had attained enough development in society to see 
that the Church no longer stood for the best and highest, 
it was transferred in an age of clerks and scholars to the 
book which contained the history of our religion, and it 
was well transferred. For the Bible represented man's 
reason and dignity better than he was yet able to do it 
in any other way, and his becoming self-distrust made 
it necessary to choose a sacred proxy to exercise the 
solemn and necessary office of divine, authoritative 
guidance. 

A small portion of the race consciously, a much larger 
portion unconsciously, are now waking up to the feeling 
that the moral and spiritual instincts, the divine reason, 
the God-made nature of man, is not performing an arro- 
gant, irreverent, or dangerous work in recognizing the 
truth, that it is man's moral and spiritual nature which 
gives all its authority to the Scriptures ; and that man's 
moral and spiritual nature is competent to judge the 
Scriptures from the moment it feels seriously impelled, 
and thoughtfully competent to do it ; and that in so do- 
ing it is only doing distinctly, and openly, and con- 
sciously what really it has always secretly been doing 
by its representatives — the Catholic heads of the Church, 
and the Protestant interpreters of the Bible. To say 
that the Bible is amenable to the soul, that the Gospel 
asks the judgment and indorsement of humanity, is to 



102 KEL1GIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

say what is most honorable, exalting and glorious of 
both — for the Soul and Humanity owe all their power 
to make this indorsement to God in them. We cannot 
blame the Christian world for clinging with a death- 
grasp to the doctrine of the Plenary Inspiration of the 
Scriptures, just so long as it fails to recognize the divine 
humanity of the soul. It can give up one form of this 
necessary faith in an ultimate rule, only as it receives 
another. To us who, whether we know it or not, owe 
all our freedom of interpretation, all our emancipation 
from the letter, all -our glorious relief from the perplexi- 
ties — historical, moral, spiritual — involved in the Bibli- 
olatry of Protestantism at large, to our faith in Man as 
inspired by the reason of God — himself the Word made 
flesh — to us belief in tEe plenary inspiration of the 
Scriptures is an impossibility, as it is no longer a neces- 
sity of our moral peace, or our spiritual anchorage, while 
it has been to all a terrible drawback on intellectual 
progress. We sometimes wonder what will be the sur- 
prise and dissatisfaction of Bible-worshippers to find no 
Bibles in heaven ! The souls they have prostrated be- 
fore their Bibles will be there, but the Bibles will be 
left here to burn in the general conflagration, with the 
other temporary representations of the Word of God, 
the eternal Beason which is the foundation of our being. 
But we shall be reading the Bible in heaven, and in in- 
timate communion with Him who is the source of the 
Bible, and of our souls. Do I say rightly, that the es- 
sence of that fundamental of Protestantism, faith in the 
plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, has passed over 



INFLUENCE OF THEOLOGICAL THEORIES. 103 

into the Liberal School in all its authority, and with 
added glory and credibleness — and blooms forth in the 
elder Scripture of God — the soul, the inspired Child of 
the heavenly and eternal Father. 

There is another principle of which I have spoken. 
We have something which, I maintain, is more 
infallible than the Scriptures — the soul of man. The 
second fundamental of Protestantism is, the mysterious 
efficacy of Christ's blood in the salvation of man. "Well, 
why does Orthodoxy believe in the efficacy of Christ's 
blood to save the souls of men? It is because man dis- 
trusts his reason and invents the infallible Church, and 
then the infallible Scriptures, to supply his necessity of 
anchorage. He distrusts his own capacity of a goodness 
worthy of heaven, and invents an artificial meritorious- 
ness to secure him what he cannot live without hoping 
for. He cannot think the God of the universe can be 
willing to save such a miserable sinner, and he invents a 
God of the Church, whom he calls Christ, who will. He 
does not believe anything men can do will entitle them 
to heaven, or that human lives can make men accepta- 
ble in the sight of God. I believe that they can, and 
that they can entitle us to immortal life. Immortal 
life will be as freely given as life itself. God gave us 
our life to begin with, and he will continue our life, and 
give us salvation in his own infinite love and mercy. 

What is the doctrine of the Bible concerning man ? 
It is an expression of divine love and mercy, and as 
such, I accept faith in the infinite mercy and love of 
God. And Christ died to reveal that truth — not to 



104: RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

create it — to the souls of men. We cannot entertain 
the doctrine of the blood of Christ, as expressed in ail 
the creeds received by our orthodox brethren. They 
construct a very ingenious law, and make a logical and 
plausible system, that we are all under the curse of God 
— that God interposed — that God died — that God was 
placated by the mercy of God, and that those of us, who 
believe in Christ, can finally be admitted into the king- 
dom of heaven. .Nothing can be more affecting than the 
various ways in which humanity, ever rebuked by its 
secret ideal, ever reproached by God's image in its own 
heart, has sought to express its own sense of unworthi- 
ness. Nothing more touching than the holy care with 
which it has sought to keep the Supreme God, its only 
hope of real salvation, from any participation in its sins, 
or any loss of dignity by a compromising commerce 
with man in his wickedness. The doctrine of human 
depravity is a glorious self-humiliation ; the doctrine of 
salvation by faith, and not by works, a magnificent con- 
tempt poured by man upon his own doings ; the doc- 
trine of Christ's merits, a sublime defence of God's 
holiness, a tender disowning of all worth in the presence 
of a love and disinterestedness worthy of God and hu- 
manity ! All this was necessary, was significant, was 
true. But the great essential truths, roughly blocked 
out, or hugely shadowed forth in these symbols and 
mystic dogmas, are now capable of being expressed, and 
are expressed in forms which are freed from the extra- 
vagances, the indirectness, and the contradictions which 
did not offend the earlier ages of the Church. 



INFLUENCE OF THEOLOGICAL THEORIES. 105 

Thoughtful people discover that the knowledge of a 
just and merciful God does away the necessity of having 
two persons in the Godhead, one called the Father to 
represent the Justice, one called the Son, to represent 
the Mercy. They see that many of the offices of Christ 
have been made necessary, by the imaginary unwilling- 
ness of the Almighty Parent to fulfill works most natu- 
ral to him, and inalienable from his excellency. They 
see that the blood of Christ means the mercy of God ; 
that the atonement means only the free love of God, and 
they therefore go behind the sign of the thing signified. 
They see that the mercy and love of God are the real 
help and salvation of men, and that the perception of 
this truth, in a less technical form, is likely to do more 
good than in the technical form in which orthodoxy 
teaches it. They say, if the atonement has done so 
much, let us hear more of it. Let us abandon all idea 
of merit, of desert, of works, and cast ourselves wholly 
on the goodness and mercy of God. And let us see if 
all his works and ways do not shine with the same 
abounding goodness and mercy, now superstitiously 
confined to the gift and the sacrifice of his Son. It is 
only the opening wide of the atonement, forever exist- 
ing in the merciful character of God, which makes life 
a sacrifice, nature an altar, and the Eternal Spirit always 
striving, struggling, suffering, to spare and redeem the 
children of men. 

I do not object to this doctrine that it is immoral. I 
find that our orthodox friends are exceedingly animated 
in their zeal, inspired by their faith in Christ. And I 

7* 



106 EELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

am not going to make use of any language which would 
disparage anything they may conscientiously hold. 
There is a great deal of Unitarian cant as well as ortho- 
dox, and a great deal of the Unitarian consists in expos- 
ing the errors of orthodoxy ! We desire in our best and 
most candid moments to acknowledge, in the fullest 
manner, the virtues and graces of the orthodox Christ- 
ians of America and the world. Betrayed by sectarian 
zeal, we may at times do serious injustice to the aims, 
the spirit, and the character of this body. Liberal cant 
is no better than conservative cant, Unitarian than 
Trinitarian bigotry, and it is nothing but bigotry which 
imagines, and cant which asserts, that the great religious 
bodies of this country, Catholic and Protestant, are not 
seriously and anxiously engaged in promoting the moral- 
ity and piety of the people, and engaged in it with large 
and most gratifying success. If we could work with 
these large, well-organized, and fruitful bodies, how 
gladly would we do so ! And this suggests the true 
reason why we have come out from them — not to go to 
a place we liked better — not to get away from a com- 
panionship we despised ; but simply because we could 
not conscientiously stay / could not entertain the opin- 
ions, profess the creeds, and be responsible for the direct 
.or indirect implications of the predominant theology of 
our age and land ! By no will of our own, but provi- 
dentially, and, as we believe, in the use and enjoyment 
of a later and clearer light, we have arrived at certain 
opinions in regard to the Gospel of Christ, which are 
offensive and heretical in the eyes of orthodoxy, and 



INFLUENCE OF THEOLOGICAL THEORIES. 107 

which make orthodoxy imperfect and unsatisfactory in 
our eyes. "We have not become Liberal Christians of 
choice, but of necessity. We have not made ourselves ■ 
the times have made us. The science, literature, poli- 
tics, humane instincts, providential developments of the 
age, acting upon persons by organization, antecedents, 
position, temperament, experience, specially fitted to 
receive their influence, have produced in us certain con- 
victions, impressions, and tastes, which orthodoxy no 
longer satisfies, and which demand what we call Liberal 
Christianity. "We are what we are by the grace of God. 
" Not of men, neither by man," have we learned our 
creed — but of God speaking in the commanding tones 
of inward convictions wrought by the irresistible influ- 
ence of his ever- working Spirit and Providence. Ortho- 
doxy could not tolerate these convictions ; Liberalism 
could not suppress them ; and nothing remained, but to 
erect a new platform — not in opposition, but in exten- 
sion of the old one. This platform, though as yet thinly 
occupied, is large enough for all Christians, and is built 
to accommodate all. We are not here upon it, in com- 
parative solitude, because we wish isolation* or are 
willing to exclude any Christians from it ; but simply 
because as yet the great body of those we acknowledge 
to be Christians cannot acknowledge us to be so ; the 
multitude we desire to work with are not willing to 
work with us. They ask us to stifle our consciences, or 
our convictions — which are a part of our consciences — 
and come and join them; to give up our opinions and 
take theirs, and then enjoy their fellowship. We ask 



108 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

them to keep their consciences, their opinions, their sin- 
gularities, and come and join us in a common faith in 
Christ, with the freest right to every man to explain his 
faith as he will — a faith in Christ, the only test of which 
shall be a life that does not deny the idea of his accepted 
mastership in the soul. But for this, they are no more 
ready than we are ready to accept their conditions of 
union. Yery well, we are sorry for them ; but not so 
sorry as they must be for us. For despite their denial 
of us, we are not compelled to deny them, nor to aban- 
don them, nor even to give up their fellowship in the 
spirit, though we are excluded from it in the form. 

Happily, what the Church is, and what the relation 
of Christians with each other, is not settled by councils, 
or creeds, or associations ; but by inevitable and self- 
executing spiritual laws. Protestantism may disown 
Catholicism, but she cannot get out of her branches the 
sap which that great ecclesiastical trunk brought up 
from the original root of the Church ; and Liberalism 
may disown Evangelicism, but she cannot break the con- 
nection which history has established between them, 
nor get rid of the blessed inheritance of faith and 
experience delivered to her by the Church of the last 
three centuries. Rome may excommunicate Geneva, 
and Geneva may excommunicate Boston ; but we might 
as well hope to get the blood of our ancestors out of our 
veins, as the history of our common Christianity out of 
the heart of the ever-living Church. The Church is 
one ; twigs, branches, stock, and root have one life, and 
cannot wisely in theory deny a union which, in fact, is 



INFLUENCE OF THEOLOGICAL THEORIES. 109 

independent of all theories, being based on the very 
nature of man and society. 

We maintain, then, that we are in the Church, and 
are the Church — not a part of it, but the whole Church 
— having in us the heart and soul of orthodoxy itself, 
the essence of all that gave life to its creed, the utmost 
significance and vital force of what it taught and still 
teaches, in what we conceive to be a stuttering and 
stammering way, in a cumbrous and outworn language, 
with a circuitous and wearisome phraseology ; but mean- 
ing really what we mean, and doing for men essentially 
what we are doing. All that we claim is a better state- 
ment of the old and changeless truth, a disembarrassed 
account of the ever true and identical story. And we in- 
sist upon the importance and necessity of this work, to 
adapt Christianity to our own age, and meet the wants 
of what -are becoming millions of human beings. 

I do not think because there is so much evil in the 
world — because there is so much ignorance, sorrow and 
sin, that we ought to be discouraged. There is progress. 
The thing is going on, and we ought to trust enough in 
God to believe that he looks down upon the progress 
of the world and is not discouraged either. We ought 
to trust more in God's compassion and love, for they are 
a thousand times more inspiring than all our servile fear. 
God is love ; and when we believe in his infinite mercy 
we shall have more courage to go on in the work of re- 
forming men, than when supposing we are pulling them 
out of hell, which God has kindled under their feet. 

To those who believe such things, all we can say is, 



110 BELIGIOITS ASPECTS OP THE AGE. 

that God in his providence has not compelled us to be- 
lieve them. But we must not fall into pride, though I 
do not think we are liable to on account of the mino- 
rity in which we are placed, and on account of the ne- 
cessity of our providential position. But we are not go- 
ing to deny the root from which we have sprung. We 
have not separated ourselves from the brethren ; we 
hold them in our inclosure ; we are always ready to re- 
ceive them, to welcome them. We are not expecting 
they will receive us, on account of their providential po- 
sition. We have an intellectual perception of what the 
times demand and what the future is to be. We can 
see clearer than they. We can see why they are wrong ; 
they cannot see why we are right — but they will pre- 
sently. 

Now, brethren, all I have to say is, let us take good 
cheer to ourselves and go on. We have a noble work 
to do in the world. We believe in the immediate pre- 
sence of God in the soul of man. We believe in the 
safety of truth and in the significance of human life, and 
.we think that all creeds are only mere stuttering, stam- 
mering attempts to tell a truth which is too big to be ex- 
pressed in words, and which is too glorious to be put 
into the articles of our faith — which are better for what 
they don't say than for what they do. 

The actual presence of God in the world, in all his 
love and mercy, supplying our deficiencies, helping our 
infirmities, consecrating and transforming matter, giv- 
ing sanctity and beauty to life — this is what the renew- 
ing of the old faith offers to Humanity. 



INFLUENCE OF THEOLOGICAL THEORIES. Ill 

The indistinct perception of this faith and the divine 
craving to see it clearly, and bring it to the sight of 
others, has led to the existence and organization of the 
Liberal Chnrches, and indirectly to the formation of the 
Yonng Men's Christian Union. Faith in man, as the 
child of God, his word and residence, authorizing the 
freest use of thought, the profoundest respect for indi- 
vidual convictions, the firmest confidence in progress 
and in the triumph of truth ; inspiring good-will, hu- 
mane affections, philanthropic activity, and personal 
holiness ; faith in God as the Father of man — man's uni- 
versal Saviour and inspirer — man's merit consists wholly 
in being his child and the pupil of his grace in nature, 
life, the church, and the unseen world — these are the 
permanent articles of Christian faith, which is not so 
much faith in Christ — as Christ's faith. Go on, young 
men, and prosper in your good work. God make you 
worthy of your principles, and make your principles as 
universal in their operation as they are eternal in their 
authority, divine in their source, and humane and exalt- 
ing in their influence. 



THE KELIGION OF.FEAK AND THE KELIGION 
OF LOYE. 

BY KEY. HENRY BLANCHARD, 

Of Brooklyn. 

Me. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: In these 
days of theological changes, an attempt has been made 
to prove that exhortations to men to cease from evil do- 
ing, because of eternal punishment, are appeals to the 
sentiment of love instead of the sentiment of fear. They 
who make this statement say, that it is incredible that 
the love of God, as shown by his death on the cross, 
should be resultless, as it would be if the passage to ho- 
liness can be made through the discipline of hell, instead 
of beneath the arms of the cross. 

To me the reasoning does not seem sound. All 
appeals to men to avoid sin, because of eternal, or any 
punishment, are appeals to fear. Men may be told with 
explicitness and earnestness, that sin is inevitably fol- 
lowed by punishment, but while this is said, they may be 
exhorted to become holy, because they ought to love 
God and goodness, and not because they fear the tor- 
tures of a mental, or the flames of a material hell. 1 
think, therefore, that any system of religion which 

makes prominent the doctrine of eternal punishment, 
112 



Religion of fear and love. 113 

may be called a religion of fear; and that which makes 
its chief point the doctrine of doing and being good, be- 
cause of the love of goodness, may be denominated the 
religion of love. 

Suffer me, then, to show, so far as I maj be able, 
some of the effects of the Religion of Fear and the Reli- 
gion of Love. 

Fear has made thousands of men observers of the 
forms of religious worship. 

"When I read of coarse and brutal soldiery ready to 
sack and slay, kneeling down before they commence 
their bloody work, I cannot doubt that they did so be- 
cause of their fear of that place whose terrors their 
priests had pictured. I cannot doubt that thousands 
who have worshipped in St. Peter's, at Rome, and St. 
Paul's, in London, were influenced by fear. 

It is not my wish to speak uncourteously ; but knowing 
that I respect all men's opinions, I do not hesitate to 
speak what I believe to be true in illustration of my 
subject. 

Consider, then, the churches of our own land ; think 
how many men there are in Roman Catholic and in 
Protestant churches, who engage in church services be- 
cause of fear. 

It is undoubtedly true, that desires to be considered 
respectable, urge many to occupy their pews. 

There are men with plethoric bodies and purses, who 
fear nothing in this world but the loss of their money 
or dinners, and do not fear the hereafter, simply because 
they do not believe in one, or, because they think that 



114: RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

the time when the minister will pronounce his eulogy 
over their bodies is very distant and who are attendants 
in church, because they think that acquaintance with a 
minister and the ownership of a pew give them respec- 
tability. Still very large numbers attend because they 
fear the future, and think that the very best way to get 
to heaven is to take one of the best seats in a Gothic 
church. For in company with so many good men ; 
with so learned a minister as the engineer, there is but 
very little danger of running off the celestial track. 

Now, such attendants at church can hardly be called 
disciples of Christ. He does not ask men to lean on his 
breast because they fear the naming pit near which they 
tread. He can hardly love those who turn towards him 
only when they begin to fear. As we wish children to 
lean on our bosoms, not because they fear the rod, but 
because they love to be there, and because they love 
us, so Christ is the brother and the master to those who 
love him. 

"While therefore the churches may be full, they are not 
full of Christians. For he who leans on his cushioned 
pew back, with the feeling of " how respectable is the 
church!", and he who counts his beads, or bends his 
head because he thinks that thus he pleases that God 
who is always pointing with one hand to the cross, and 
with the other to the flames of the damned ; are not 
such Christians as Jesus would have them to be ? 

Again, fear is inoperative in preventing evil in very 
many cases. 

The influence of fear can only be temporary. Men 



RELIGION OF FEAR AND LOVE. 115 

are not always afraid of anything. The poltroon of the 
first battle becomes the daring soldier of the third. The 
cowardly assassin, who sknlked at first in dread of the 
police and the gibet, soon chats with the former, and 
pats the latter. 

The man who lives near a Mount Vesuvius, may fear 
that the lava some day may bury himself and house, 
and yet he plays with his children in summer evenings, 
and sleeps soundly in his bed in winter nights. 

Men who, looking into the next world, see the shining 
walls of heaven, and the light that falls upon them from 
the furnaces of hell, into which they look, even though 
they may be conscious of their possible thermal journey, 
are not always afraid. 

Thus, a thief believing in eternal punishment, is not 
deterred thereby, when he is about to break the pane 
of glass, or pick the lock. 

If a minister were to meet him within the house, and 
to tell him of a hell, the thief would not be much moved. 
Ministers, however, are generally abed when the thieves 
are abroad. If an angel were to meet the thief, and to 
speak of unending punishment, there might be some 
effect wrought ; but angels do not leave heaven to turn 
men out of houses. 

Moreover, some of the most heinous crimes are com- 
mitted when a man cannot be considered sane. Thus, 
a murderer, whether he commits the deed under sudden 
impulse in an unexpected- opportunity, or has been 
stealthy and cool as a tiger in his approach to his vic- 
tim, is insane ; insane in the one instance, because accu- 



116 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

nmlated hate made him a brute animal^ without thought 
of God or a hereafter — insane, in the other, because 
poverty, wrong, or any other cause, crushed down the 
spirit and developed the animal. Then the deed is done, 
the victim lying before him ghastly and gory, then first 
comes horror at the deed, and the thought of punish- 
ment. 

Again, where fear is operative, it has only restraining 
force. 

Fear may make a man afraid to steal a purse near a 
dead man's coffin, but it will seldom prompt him to put 
a purse into a widow's hand. Thus it makes men 
strive to see how little evil they can do, but not how 
much good. 

Do we not see illustration of this fact in the actions 
of men about us ; in him who gives his hundred dollars 
to a missionary in the parlor, and then goes to the win- 
dow to drive away the pale girl begging at the back 
door; in him who lounges on his couch while the 
seamstress stitches, whose earnings help to buy his 
house and dinners ? For such suppose that their money 
to missionaries, and their attendance at church, when 
they have done no positive wrong, are the price of ad- 
mission to heaven, and they are by no means desirous 
of paying a larger admission fee than is necessary. 
Such men forget that while Christ receives his brother 
in the church, he kisses him by the weary woman's 
side, or the sick man's bed. 

Let us consider the effects of the religion of love. 
Love that makes the mother's chamber richer than 



RELIGION OF FEAR AND LOVE. 117 

palaces or cathedrals are, and the wifely smile a shining 
ripple of the stream of love that flows from God through 
all the world : that makes the baby's cradle the ark 
over which angels stoop, and the grandsire's head the 
mount about which light from thqpfuture heaven plays ; 
that sees the loveliness of soul in the friend's ungainly 
form, and some goodness shining beneath the rags of 
poverty and the livery of vice ; that urges us to the 
doing of noble deeds, and that sees God in all things 
round. Now, the religion of love, while it has made 
many disciples, has made but few attendants on church 
worship. I might dwell at length on this, but I only 
name it and pass it by. But it is worthy our consider- 
ation, that many men who are moved to duty by love, 
instead of fear, do not honor the church. They find 
their altars in rocks that hang over the sea, and in 
mountains that rise towards heaven ; they lean on banks 
of rivers, hearing music from the waters, and seeing 
God in the grass and flowers, and do not seek the altars 
raised in temples of man's building. 

Again, love has more occasion for manifestation than 
fear. There are more flowers than volcanoes, and so he 
whose soul is moved by love as he looks on the former, 
has more occasion for the manifestations of love than 
has he for those of fear who trembles at volcanoes. 
Fear requires extraordinary events for its action, while 
love is elicited by common occurrences, and, therefore, 
there is greater permanence in its influence. 

It is swift to warm the soul when the smile on the 
infant is seen, and the words of the mother are heard ; 



118 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

when kind deeds are done in one's behalf, and when 
natnre is seen in her glory. A religion, then, which 
appeals to love, and incites to doing by this love, is 
more permanent in its influence than that which ap- 
peals to fear. 

Again, the religion of love saves ns from doubting 
God's government. 

We have need of a faith to save us from doubt. As 
we read of the battle-fields where the brave and good 
have been trodden down by the evil ; as we know of a 
Kossuth driven from Hungary, while a Napoleon leaps 
to a throne : as we look into the cellars of great cities 
where woman is leprous and man wallows, where child- 
ren flaunt in their rags and appall with imprecations, we 
need some faith that shall make us hope. 

Now, if I believed in a religion of fear, I should have 
but little hope. What has it done to make the slave- 
catcher repent, or the harlot reform ? What has it done 
to check the hand of him who is poisoning his brother 
with deadly drink, or to arrest the axe of the royal mur- 
derer, or the dagger of the midnight assassin ? If my 
hope for the world's reformation, then, depended on the 
success of a religion of fear, I should despond. At 
times it seems as though there were some men who need 
the smell of fire to drive them from evil. But I never 
long remain in that opinion. 

However, hard, coarse, invulnerable men may seem 
to be, still, in my calmest, most thoughtful, highest 
moods, I believe that, after all, it is only love that is to 
sweep clean the cellars of Five Points, and the " hells " 



RELIGION OF TEAR AND LOVE. 119 

of London — tliat is to turn all men from evil. It is only 
when we believe, as the religion of love teaches us, that 
punishment is for improvement, that we can hope. 

Eternal punishment, the doctrine of the religion of 
fear, if it does not improve, can only seem awful to our 
minds ; and if it does improve, then it is at least the por- 
tion of those who are good. If we believe that the good, 
however made so by the discipline of earth or the 
punishment of hell will suffer, how can we hope that a 
God who does not end suffering in the next world will 
cause it to cease in this ? 

But, in order that we may work with strong hearts 
and arms here, it is necessary to believe that pain which 
comes from evil will cease here, and therefore that evil 
also will come to an end. 

Oh yes, as we young men grow into thoughtful 
moods, and think of the great problems of life, we need 
the faith that will save us from doubting the providence 
of God. 

To this Union, Mr. President, in whose behalf it gives 
me pleasure to speak to-night, this religion of love comes 
to give courage and power. 

Believing it, we can look trustingly to God, and 
calmly on the evil of the world. 

Strengthened by it, we can work as young men, 
whether within the pulpit or without it, for God's glory 
and man's redemption. 

Let us look to him, the all-powerful, and loving, and 
merciful ; let us look to Christ, the sweet, the serene, 
the majestic. Following him as the leader, and work- 



120 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

ing in his spirit, we shall be led to victory over doubt 
and fear. 

Note. — As this address was - not prepared with any expectation of 
publication, and as the last part was chiefly extemporaneous, I have 
taken some lieense in writing out this part. The ideas, however, are 
the same, though the form and fullness of expression has been somewhat 
changed. 



THE PEOPEE TREATMENT OF THE Es T FH)EL 
TEXDEXCIES OF OUE DAY. 

BY REV. 0. B. FROTHIXGHAM, 
Of Jersey City. 

The subject which has been assigned me is a rather 
delicate one ; at least it seemed so before I heard Bro- 
ther Bellows speak. There is another thing, however, 
which makes me think it is not quite so delicate a sub- 
ject, and that is, if you will allow me to mention it, Mr. 
President, that you, in the judgment of very many, are 
an infidel. The members of this Christian association 
occupy what is regarded an infidel position. And that 
very admirable constitution which I have read to-day, 
if presented at a council of churches, commonly reputed 
orthodox, would be considered, doubtless, the platform 
of an infidel association. Those who have had so much 
cause to ask for charity as we have, can afford to be 
charitable. But those three cardinal virtues of Christian- 
ity — Faith, Hope, Charity — are not so easily obtained. 
Faith, which is not the muscular grip of the under- 
standing upon wooden cars of formula, but the yearning 
spirit which gives the substance of what is hoped for, 
the evidence of what is not seen ; Hope, which is 
always straining its eyes towards a brighter future ; 

fi 121 



122 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

and Charity, which, while it roots itself in God, and 
holds fast its own convictions, can open wide its arms 
of love to every earnest thinking man — these things are 
not so easily obtained. Most people seem to think 
themselves in a posture of faith, when, their backs 
braced np against a dead wall of theory, they vigorously 
keep doubts and objections at arm's-length. But true 
faith is the reaction of the soul upon God, and only he 
who thus conceives of faith can have any idea of the 
nature of infidelity, or the love which can do it 
justice. 

The word infidelity is still potent in the conjuration 
of evil spirits. It is a word suggestive of wicked asso- 
ciations, and charged with the gall of bitterness. Every 
man resents the application of the term to himself. 
Even those who are themselves rank infidels in the view 
of seven-eighths of Christendom, and who might have 
learned by this time, one would think, to take the epi- 
thet, when bestowed on them, as a mere formula of 
theological classification, nevertheless feel insulted when 
it is bestowed ; for the name suggests something more 
than difference of opinion on theological points — it sug- 
gests a culpable difference of opinion — it implies a want 
of reverence, truth, lovingness, humility, and other quali- 
ties belonging to the good heart. It is a title of oppro- 
brium, and is meant to be. It has been purposely 
scented with sulphur ; and yet infidelity, as popularly 
defined, is no sin in the sight of God. It is not marked 
in the decalogue, nor noticed in the Sermon on the 
Mount; it is no guilt of which a man's natural con- 



TREATMENT OF INFIDEL TENDENCIES. 123 

science convicts him. If it is a crime, it is a crime 
purely factitious and conventional. Enlightened rea- 
son knows nothing of it ; the simple heart knows no- 
thing of it ; the awakened sonl knows nothing of it ; the 
infinite Spirit of truth knows nothing of it. It is a ghost 
which the prevalent theology has scared up from the 
region of ancient night. Had there been no sectarian 
exclusiveness, no assumption of infallibility by churches 
or parties, no dogmatism on matters of speculation, 
what is called infidelity would never have been heard 
of; the thing would never have been imagined. Infi- 
delity is simply the reaction of the human mind against 
the narrow intellectual restrictions of the creeds. When 
these are sharply defined, jealously guarded, severely 
enforced by weight of authority, infidelity smoulders in 
the breasts of the thoughtful many, and breaks out with 
volcanic force in the passionate denials of the heroic 
few, who, like Voltaire and Thomas Paine, have the 
courage to make themselves heard. If the creeds be- 
come confused and lax, if the authority that sustains 
them become divided against itself, as is the case at 
present, infidelity comes forth into the light ; it increases, 
it is outspoken, it assumes coherent and systematic 
shape, and at the same time loses its impatient, aggres- 
sive, and negative character ; and so modern infidelity 
differs from that of any preceding time chiefly in this : 
that it is so powerful, and so widely diffused, that it can 
afford to be more comprehensive, positive, wise, and 
calm. But leaving generalities, let me come more close 
to the matter in hand. 



124 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

Infidelity, technically defined, is disbelief in the 
Scriptures, as they are interpreted by the accepted 
religions authorities. If the Church is the admitted 
interpreter, he is an infidel who holds anything incon- 
sistent with its reading of the sacred text. If a dogma 
interprets them, as it does in all Protestant lands, he is 
an infidel who rejects the sense which the dogma pro- 
nounces to be there. If they must be received literally, 
or not rightly at all, he is the infidel who, disregarding 
the letter, penetrates to the spirit, a conscientious stu- 
dent of the Book of Nature, written upon the firmament 
in letters of everlasting light, and engraved by the finger 
of God upon the stony tablets which lie, layer upon 
layer, in the eternal archives of the pre- Adamite earth, 
meets there with statements of fact and principles of 
law that are inconsistent with the Bible's statements on 
the same subjects, and because he will not disavow the 
results of his original reading of that orignal word, every 
line of which is authentic, and no page of which has 
been blurred by translation, he must bear the name of 
infidel. The learned scholar applies to the Bible the 
same rules of literary criticism that he applies to other 
books, and perceiving many features in its composition 
which he cannot reconcile with received theories of its 
inspiration, he must throw away his library, fall on his 
knees before the idol, and cry "jpeccavi" or be ranked an 
infidel. The man of quick and illuminated conscience 
meeting in the " holy volume " sentiments he cannot ap- 
prove of, and immoralities he must condemn, is straight- 
way branded as infidel, unless he will disown the revela- 



TREATMENT. OF INFIDEL TENDENCIES. 125 

tions made by the Holy Spirit to his own heart, and will 
say that his holiest feelings are a noxious fume from the 
abyss below. The profoundly religious man, whose expe- 
riences have outgrown the un spiritual stage in which 
the Hebrews lingered — fascinated by the barbaric splen- 
dors of an Oriental Deity — whose soul revolts from what 
seem to him false views of the Infinite, can escape the 
charge and the penalty of infidelity only by putting on 
sackcloth, sitting in ashes, and bewailing his hard and 
impenitent heart. We have only to repeat over thought- 
fully a few of the great infidel names, to be satisfied 
that the epithet has been bestowed on men who have 
labored in the cause of intellectual freedom, who have 
placed confidence in the honest exercise of the human 
reason, who have enlarged the boundaries of scientific 
and other inquiry, and opened new fields to the occu- 
pancy of the soul. The name of Galileo springs at once 
into every recollection. Let me add those of Huss and 
Jerome ; of "Wickliffe, Luther, and his compeers ; of 
Shelley, who believed so much in God, that he was fain 
to call himself an atheist. . The Puritans, the Quakers, 
the Unitarians, from Socinius to Priestley, from Priest- 
ley to Channing, from Channing to Parker and Mar- 
tineau ; the Reformers — anti-slavery men like Garrison 
and Phillips, who say, "If the Bible countenances 
slavery, so much the worse for the Bible ;" advocates 
of the claims of women, who venture to criticise the 
apostle Paul for his ungallant depreciation of the fair 
sex ; the enemies of the gallows, whose humanity pre- 
suming upon some natural growth in the conscience of 



126 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

mankind in the course of several thousand years, takes 
the liberty of doubting whether the barbarous enact- 
ments of the age of Noah are a legitimate basis for the 
legislation of a Christian commonwealth — all these, and 
multitudes besides, are written in the black list of infi- 
delity. Infidels, in all generations of the Church, have 
been the progressives in every direction ; the believers 
in the present and the future ; the people who had con- 
fidence in the improvability of man, and the perennial 
inspirations of God; the men and women who were 
persuaded that all the spheres of wisdom and excellence 
were opened to human powers, and that man was wel- 
comed to all the treasure they contained. 

Is it now the question, how are we to treat such as 
these ? The question can receive but one answer from this 
platform. To look askance at them, to keep aloof from 
them, to call them hard names, to menace them with 
exclusion from the privileges of earthly fellowship as a 
foretaste of their everlasting separation from God's favor, 
to express towards them any unkind or suspicious feel- 
ing, is to do a coarse and foolish injustice not less to our- 
selves than to them. Let us not either speak of exercis- 
ing charity or forbearance towards them ; for that would 
convey an assumption of superior wisdom or grace on 
our part. If I have described these people fairly, if 
they are indeed thoughtful, earnest, hopeful people, bent 
on finding the truth and doing their duty, we surely can 
do no better than seek to catch some portion of their 
noble zeal, and draw off into our own minds some of the 
positive convictions which are the animating spirit of 



TREATMENT OF INFIDEL TENDENCIES. 127 

theirs. It will do us no harm to sit at their feet occa- 
sionally ; to listen with respect to what they may have 
to say ; and consider whether, after all, they may not be 
the deeper, broader believers. Grant that they over- 
look or deny some truths which we hold exceedingly 
dear, which we believe to be essential to the welfare and 
progress of mankind, we will not magnify their unbelief, 
and undervalue their belief; we will not call their at- 
tention sharply to their denials, as if what they rejected 
could be of as much consequence as what they held ; 
we will frankly say to them, " Go on in God's name ; 
study honestly, think hard ; you have beliefs — accept 
them as your guide, and follow them generously. If 
the things we deem essential are essential, you will find 
them in time ; if not, no matter." "We will not drive 
them into a negative position, terrifying them with 
ghost-stories, till, as they run on their appointed way, 
their heads ever and anon turn over their shoulders to 
glare at some imaginary demons of haunting doubt. We 
will not compel them to walk backwards towards the 
light. If it is an unspeakable wrong we do ourselves, 
when, brooding over unbeliefs, we think of ourselves 
as infidels ; if we know that, by dwelling on our denials, 
we allow dimness to steal over our moral vision, le- 
thargy to seize on our moral purpose, indecision and im- 
becility to take possession of our hearts, and leave us 
full of great resources, at the mercy of a whim — it is an 
equal wrong done to others when we remind them of 
their skepticism, and we do not fully avoid this wrong 
until we recognize all men as positive believers in some- 



128 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

thing, and candidly say to them, " Never mind now 
what, you disbelieve ; decide what it is you believe / take 
that, be true to it, and it will be enough." 

Meanwhile, we must do what we can to win the con- 
sent of honest minds to our persuasions. If our platform 
is too small to accommodate them all, we will extend it ; 
we will remove every superfluous article of furniture ; 
we will expand our definitions, simplify our statements, 
revise our formularies, sink our foundations deeper, un- 
til we come to a bottom broad enough for the erection 
of a temple that will contain the whole truth-loving, 
worshipping Christendom. Instead of complaining that 
the old homestead of faith is too narrow to hold the in- 
creasing family of the seekers, we will rather rejoice that 
it has at length become so narrow that additions must 
be made to it in order to meet the demands of ampler 
hospitality. Instead of shuddering at each new denial, 
we will rather congratulate ourselves that possible de- 
nials are less by one ; that the truth, the final, necessary 
truth is by so much the nearer ; that the time is ap- 
proaching when the unity of the Spirit shall annihilate 
infidelity, and remove the temptation to deny. 

But I am reminded that all modern infidelity is not 
of this noble stamp ; that the tendencies of unbelief are 
downward, as well as upward, running out into mate- 
rialism, sensualism, antinomianism, diabolism, the pan- 
theism of the naturalist, the atheism of the fatalist, the 
deification of the appetites. So indeed it seems. But 
as Mr. Macaulay says, in his famous article on Mil- 
ton : " There is only one cure for the evils which newly 



TREATMENT OF INFIDEL TENDENCIES. 129 

acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom" 
It is in precisely such cases as these that the conciliating 
policy is needful, and the exclusive policy suicidal. 
These rough, ungovernable spirits, irreverent, passion- 
ate, are the worst subjects in the world for pious admo- 
nition and grave rebuke. They must be brought to see, 
as they never have seen, the positive beauty of spiritual 
truths ; they must be made to feel the persuasive influ- 
ence of the great beliefs which good men cherish ; they 
must be invited, unobtrusively, to lay aside their old 
prejudices against religious ideas as the invention of 
superstition, and religious institutions as the tools of ty- 
ranny, and to perceive in them elevating, refining, invi- 
gorating powers, man's natural sustenance for mind and 
soul. But how shall they be induced to view them in 
this light ? Certainly not by denunciations ; certainly 
not by contempt ; certainly not by an unsympathetic 
attitude of superiority or indifference. Where infidelity, 
as in these instances, has a moral cause, it must have a 
moral cure. Let even the scoffer see that we really be- 
lieve in our own doctrines, that we endeavor to live un- 
der the influence of the lofty ideas we profess to hold so 
precious, that some of the beauty we adore in the hea- 
vens has passed into our own spirits, and soon he will 
lose the disposition to scoff. The logic of a consistent 
life is irresistible. It will bring men back even to their 
superstitions, as was demonstrated by Fenelon, when, 
alone, refusing the protection of soldiers, he went un- 
armed among the infuriated Huguenots of Pictou to win 
them back to the Church which had just butchered 



130 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

their brethren in cold blood. Multitudes of people in 
our communities associate religion, the Church, the 
Bible, the creeds, the clergy, with pride, hypocrisy, the 
arbitrary assumption of dignity and power. In warring 
upon religion they devoutly believe themselves to be 
warring upon priestcraft, superstition, and the institu- 
tions by which man is degraded. Let us convince them 
of their mistake ; let us teach them by word and exam- 
ple that reverence and liberty go hand in hand toge- 
ther, that true freedom consists in obedience to the 
Spirit, that the great hope and persuasions of the soul 
exert their legitimate influence when they make us 
kindly, generous, humane; that we at least owe to 
them our deliverance from the very bigotries they 
abhor. 

After all, it is only fidelity that will counteract infi- 
delity. Can any one affect wonder at the prevalence of 
very gross unbelief in religious verities ? Consider how 
little the Church has done to give mankind wholesome 
instruction in the laws of the earthly and heavenly life ; 
how little it has done to develop freely and gracefully 
the capacities of rational beings ; consider the discou- 
raging views presented of human nature in its original and 
constitution, its tendencies and destiny. Consider the 
savage treatment which the senses have received at the 
hands of churchmen and theologians. Call to mind the 
wholesale proscription of the natural desires of recrea- 
tion. Nay, remember that religion, claiming to speak in 
the name of Jesus, has pronounced whole classes of human 
pursuits to be unsanctified. Mankind will not submit for 



TREATMENT OF INFIDEL TENDENCIES. 131 

ever to such restraints. It cannot. It should not. And 
when, after centuries of ecclesiastical strait-jacketing, it 
succeeds in emancipating itself, are we surprised at the 
violence and riot of its breaking forth ? For my part, 1 
must confess, that even the more passionate tendencies 
of modern infidelity so called, melancholy as they are 
to contemplate, menacing apparently a return to barba- 
rism, seem to me natural, nor wholly discreditable to 
human nature. Blind they may be, and coarse and de- 
praving, but what else can be expected from men whom 
religion has not undertaken to develop or refine ? But 
they are set in motion by a dumb instinct that cannot 
abide forced and unwarranted repression, and they are 
guided by a dogged trust in human nature, which ac- 
cepts the inspiration 'of the senses, because it does not 
yet understand what the inspiration of the soul may be. 
They betray a vast impatience with the asceticism that 
for so many generations has denied men access to the 
genial influences of life. 

Yery imperfect vindication of very rudimental rights, 
you will say. Yery true ; so it is ; but let us call it vin- 
dication, not apostasy; not a declension from better 
beliefs, for such better beliefs the people never really 
cherished ; let us call it, not infidelity, but fidelity — 
mute, brutish, and undiscerning to such laws as are dis- 
covered in the constitution of their nature ; let us do our 
best to diffuse a knowledge of higher laws ; let us pray 
with all our might that these first inarticulate signs of 
return to a natural allegiance may lead, by a normal 
unfolding, through the several stages of intellectual. 



132 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE 

moral, and spiritual growth towards a more complete 
supremacy of right, reason, and conscience. 

From these imperfect hints it will be inferred that, in 
what men call infidelity, I discover the rude commence- 
ment of a nobler spiritual faith. At present we see only 
its dim promise, clouded by much that is rude and 
elementary, by much that is deplorable. Infidelity has 
as yet reached few results in any direction. But as 
indicating a general reaction in all directions against 
unjustifiable restraints upon human nature, it is some- 
thing to be watched, guided, instructed, but nothing to 
be feared. ~No ; the only infidelity to be feared, the 
only real infidelity in fact, the only infidelity which is 
a sin in the sight of God, is a disbelief in the primary 
faculties of the human soul ; disbelief in the capability 
of man's reason to discriminate between truth and error 
in all departments of knowledge, sacred or profane ; 
disbelief in the heart's instinctive power to distinguish 
good from evil ; disallowance of the claims of conscience 
to pass a verdict upon matters of right and wrong, 
whenever and wherever brought up. They are the infi- 
dels who are untrue to the light they have ; who deny 
the plenary inspiration of that elder Scripture written 
by the finger of God upon the human heart ; who over- 
lay their reason with heaps of antiquated traditions ; 
who bid their conscience stand dumb before appal- 
ling iniquities in obedience to the ill-read letter of 
an ancient record ; who, in the interest of power, 
wealth, worldliness, not seldom of unrighteousness and 
inhumanity, plead for a Tract Society, a Bible, or a 



TKEATMENT OF INFIDEL TENDENCIES. 133 

Church ; who compass sea and land to make a prose- 
lyte, and, when he is made, are quite indifferent as to 
his being a practical Christian ; who collect vast sums 
of money annually for the ostensible purpose of saving 
men's souls, practically to the effect of keeping their 
souls in subjection and blindness. As I read the New 
Testament, I find that Jesus charged infidelity upon 
none but such as these : the people who made religion 
a cloak for pride, selfishness, and cruelty ; the conspic- 
uously saintly people who could spare an hour to pray 
at a street-corner, but had not a minute for a dying 
fellow-man lying in his blood in a lonely pass. In the 
judgment of these, Jesus himself was the prince of 
unbelievers. Punctilious adherence to the letter, prac- 
tical disbelief .in the Spirit — this is infidelity. Every- 
where, in the Church and out of it, under whatever 
guise, with whatever demeanor, whether stalking along 
publicly with brazen face of defiance set against all that 
men deem holy, or creeping noiseless about, cowled and 
demure within the cloisters of consecrated observance — 
it is always the same thing, always rank, hateful, malig- 
nant. This it is that corrupts the fountains of moral life 
in society. Is it a question how we must deal with 
this ? Can there be a better way than that pursued by 
the Master himself? We must endeavor to lay the evil 
bare in its true character, to tear off its mask, that peo- 
ple may see what it is, to weaken its prestige of wisdom, 
authority, sanctity ; we must pour upon it the flood of 
an honest indignation, and pronounce upon it the ver- 
dict of a true Christian conscience. But this dutv is 



134 



EELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 



but preliminary to another, in which it is included — 
that of diffusing a knowledge of the truth, and of giving 
to the regenerating principles of a true Christianity an 
organized and extended power that shall command for 
them a willing and profound obedience. 



TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS OF EVANGELICAL 
RELIGION. 

BY REV. DR. SAWYER. 

Mr. President, Ladles and Gentlemen : In all 
reforms, in whatever tends to meliorate the social or 
civil condition of mankind, we must always observe the 
potent influence of Religion. For say what we will of 
man, even though we consider him fallen and totally 
depraved, still the fact is apparent and undeniable that 
he is by nature a religious being. A nation of atheists 
never existed and never will. Some form of religion 
man has always had, and always must have. 

And as religion lies nearest of all forces to the human 
heart, and touches the very springs of our action, so it 
must ever exert the deepest and most permanent influ- 
ence in forming the character of both individuals and 
nations. And although, in such complicated problems, 
there must always be many disturbing causes, and many 
exceptions, which no philosophy can fully explain, still 
it is on general principles true, that if you can tell us 
what a people's religion is, we can also tell you what its 
condition and character must be. Consequences follow 
their causes, and take their coloring from them. Men 
do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles. A 



136 KELIGMOTTS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

false religion never yet raised a people to a true civiliza- 
tion. 

In the ancient states, long ago perished, of Assyria, 
Egypt, Greece, and Eome, we see, I think, the highest 
civilization which the human race has ever attained 
under an unrevealed religion. And the scholar need not 
be told what it was, nor, with all its glories in literature 
and art, with all its commerce and physical power, how 
poor it was. 

Eighteen centuries ago a new era dawned upon the 
world. Out from the manger of Bethlehem and the 
village of Nazareth, from the Garden of Gethsemane 
and the cross of Calvary, went forth a new light that is 
now streaming over the earth. It came when men 
seemed to have done their utmost, and the human mind 
had wrought its greatest achievements and gained its 
noblest victories. It came as a new moral force in the 
world, and breathed a new life over the nations. It 
came with new ideas, and entering the heart, it kindled 
there new hopes and diviner aspirations. 

Christianity presents itself to us in a three-fold form. 
It is a truth : it imparts a spirit : it goes out into a 
life. In other words, it demands faith, it inspires love, 
and blossoms in good works. And observe, these three 
things are not isolated from one another, but belong 
together, stand in a certain order, and hold certain 
relations to each other. Without a Christian faith, how 
is one to acquire a Christian spirit, or perform the 
duties of a Christian life ? 

When the Jews asked Jesus what they should do 



IDEAS OF EVANGELICAL KELIGION. 137 

that they might work the works of God, he replied : 
" This is the work of God, that ye believe on. him 
whom he hath sent." Faith in Jesus of Nazareth as 
the Sent of God, was the first, the indispensable work 
for them to perform. This was to change their hearts, 
to modify all their conscious relations towards God and 
their fellow-men, and to be the means of their salva- 
tion. "Without this faith they remained as they were, 
saw things in their old light, and lived over their old 
lives. With it they became new creatures, and rose 
into a higher plane of life. 

The Christian religion went out into the world chal- 
lenging the assent of men, and demanding reception 
into the human heart. You all know the war it occa- 
sioned, a war of ideas. Divine truths, which are 
always young and vigorous, grappled with hoary 
errors, and were victors in the contest. Before this 
new religion, went down pagan temple, and altar, and 
shrine. Old institutions and customs passed away, and 
on their ruins gradually arose, and is still rising, a new 
Christian civilization, with its " divine humanities," its 
deeper love and its higher hopes. 

It was faith in Christ that wrought these changes 
over the face of the earth. Men believed and therefore 
spoke and acted as they did. They saw the truth and 
received it, and placed themselves in harmony with it, 
and then went forth under its guidance to lead others 
into its light and up towards heaven. 

But what, it may be asked, did men believe ? I 
answer, they believed, first of all, that Jesus of !N~aza- 



138 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

reth was the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, the 
Saviour of the world. They believed him to be the 
image of God and an infallible and authoritative 
Teacher. They believed him to be the great Prophet 
so long foretold, and the great King whose reign was to 
become so wide and so beneficent. They recognized 
him as Emanuel, God with us, for in him dwelt all the 
fullness of the Godhead bodily. He spoke God's word, 
and did God's work. He declared the Father, and 
unfolded to us the spiritual laws of the universe. He 
revealed to our race its true relations, its duties and its 
destiny. 

!Now he who thus believed in Christ had nothing to 
do but to sit down, like Mary of old, at the feet of the 
Divine' Master and learn of him, learn his doctrine, 
catch his spirit, and do his will. And St. John tells us 
that " whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is 
born of God." By this faith he becomes a Christian, 
enters the family of saints, and becomes a citizen of the 
kingdom of heaven. 

I need not say that this is the true ground of " Christ- 
ian union." Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ, 
the Son of God ; whoever receives him as a divine 
teacher and saviour, is a Christian, and belongs to the 
Church universal. All other grounds of union seem to 
me false or impracticable. I do not deny that love is 
necessary to such union ; it is the bond of perfectness 
everywhere. But love itself, Christian love, grows out 
of Christian faith, as the grape grows upon the vine, 
and cannot exist without it. 



IDEAS OF EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 139 

The difficulty lies here, not in making faith the basis 
of union, but in demanding a unity of faith in too many 
things, and in things which at best are only matters 
of doubtful disputation, and were never required by 
Christ and his apostles. " I believe that Jesus Christ 
is the Son of God," was the confession of the eunuch, 
and upon this alone was he baptized and received into 
the Church. He was born of God, according to St. 
John, and was a Christian. It is now as it was N then, 
and I would take my stand where Philip and the apostles 
stood. To me every man is a Christian who believes 
that Jesus is the Christ, and as such, he is entitled to my 
sympathies and my love. He may be but a beginner 
in the gospel, and, like the poor blind man, may see 
men as trees walking ; he may be ignorant in many 
things, and err in many things, as we all no doubt do, 
but still he is a Christian and my brother. He owns the 
same Master, and, if he is sincere, follows the same guide. 
I care not to what sect he may chance to belong, or what 
name he may bear. He is, with myself, a disciple of 
Christ, and an heir of God. 

This union, however, does not imply an impossible 
sameness of thought and opinion among men. All 
Christendom agrees in the fundamental truth that Jesus 
is the Christ, and that his words are spirit and life, while 
it is difficult to bring any considerable part of it to adopt 
any one of the many symbols of faith, or confessions, 
which individuals or sects have framed for their fellow- 
men. I doubt, indeed, whether God intended that all 
men should agree in all the minutiae of opinion and 



140 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

faith. He loves variety. Go out into the forest and 
you cannot find two leaves precisely alike. It is so with 
the human race. In a general unity there is an endless 
diversity, and out of this grow many of the charms and 
harmonies of life. The world would be insipid, if not 
intolerable, did we all look, think, speak, and act just 
alike, so that every man we meet should be only a se- 
cond self, alter et idem. 

But because we do not all look or believe precisely 
alike, is it worth our while to worry and devour each 
other ? Is it not better to allow what we cannot readily 
change, to take things as we find them, and employ 
them as best we may for our mutual growth and im- 
provement ? I like the philosophy of an eminent literary 
woman of our own country, who, after much conflict and 
difficulty, condescendingly resolved to " accept the uni- 
verse." It was a great act of a noble mind. True, the 
universe was not altogether such as she would have it ; 
but then it was here, and she could not easily remove it, 
and she finally did the best thing she could, under the cir- 
cumstances, with it, she accepted it. I am disposed to 
follow her example on this subject of diversity of opinion 
in the matter of religion. I will tolerate what I cannot 
prevent, and will believe* that there is still something 
good in what many deplore as so great an evil. 

The Romish Church endeavors to cast all minds in 
one mould, and bring all men to think and believe pre- 
cisely alike. This is the great problem at which it has 
been industriously laboring for centuries. And what is 
the success which has attended its efforts? Why, so 



IDEAS OF EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 141 

far as it has succeeded at all, it has only suppressed free 
thought, practically ignored reason, denied Christian 
charity, and made faith a formal thing, utterly destitute 
of vitality and power. It deserves to be considered how 
far that is Christian faith which is merely an unreason- 
ing, and often an unreasonable assent to dogmas that 
we must not examine, and which it is little less than 
endless perdition to doubt. The Romish Church boasts 
of its unity of faith. Its doctrines, we are told, are 
always and everywhere received by all. But will it 
tell us what this vaunted unity, such as it is, has really 
cost ? how many wars and persecutions, what racks and 
tortures, what tears and anguish ? To secure this unity 
that Church has covered itself with innocent blood, and 
converted the religion of Jesus Christ into an engine of 
tyranny and outrage. And, after all, what is it worth ? 
It is the product of fear, not of love ; the result of igno- 
rance, not of knowledge ; the child of darkness, rather 
than of light. It is a palsy of the public intellect and 
the public conscience wherever it exists. 

Protestants maintain the right and duty of private 
judgment. In practice, however, with many of them, 
this boasted right dwindles down to this, the right to 
think and believe precisely as they themselves do. True, 
necessity has forced them to exercise a narrow and 
grudging spirit of tolerance. Heresies, it may be ob- 
served, grow orthodox as those who hold them become 
numerous and formidable. In this country, therefore, 
we have, at the present time, no less than seven evan- 
gelical sects, differing widely from each other, indeed, 



142 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

in many tilings, but bound together by a sort of semi- 
Christian charity, not over broad nor always very sincere. 
They by no means constitute a mutual admiration society. 
Why they exclude from their fellowship the Roman 
Church, the venerable mother of them all, and the great 
patron, if not indeed the author, of most of the doc- 
trines they hold in common, it is not easy to say. That 
Church deserves to take its place at the very head of the 
evangelical alliance. But, however this may be, I can- 
not doubt that in the changes going on in the religious 
world the arms of evangelical charity must be still more 
widely extended. I anticipate the day when Unitarians 
and Universalists, and perhaps other sects still outside, 
shall be admitted to their fellowship and take their 
places among evangelical Christians. 

What a strange power there is in a name ! How self- 
complacent it makes one to wear a gracious title, even 
when it is self-assumed, and what is worse, clearly 
inappropriate. We hear much of "the evangelical 
churches," and of " evangelical doctrines." Men claim 
no little honor and deference for belonging to the one 
and holding to the other. It seems to increase one's 
respectability, if it does not deepen his piety, to call 
himself, and be called by others, evangelical. 

But has it never occurred to you to inquire what this 
charmed word really means? You need not be told 
that it is formed from a Greek word which we translate 
Gospel, and signifies " good news," " glad tidings ;" 
whatever, then, is accordant with the gospel is evan- 
gelical. The doctrines of Christ and his apostles are 



IDEAS OF EVANGELICAL RELIGION. ^43 

evangelical. Whoever believes these doctrines and 
conforms to them is an evangelical Christian, whether 
within the seven churches which assume this title, or 
without them. 

But this only provokes the question, what the evan- 
gelical doctrines really are. You all know what are 
made to pass under this honored name. It is the old 
artificial scheme of religion with which we have been 
familiar from our childhood. It has very little good 
news in it. At its advent angels had slight occasion 
to shout and sing, for it was not like the gospel of the 
"New Testament, " good tidings of great joy which shall 
be unto all people." 

As in the times of the apostles there was " another 
gospel, which was not another," so now there is an 
evangelical religion which is not evangelical, and 
which is a perversion of the gospel of Christ. The 
leading features of this popular theory may, perhaps, 
be expressed under the following heads of doctrine : 
The Trinity ; original sin and total depravity / the 
'infinite demerit of 'man ■, and the infinite wrath of God / 
vicarious atonement and miraculous regeneration ; the 
limitation of saving grace and mercy to this present 
life, and the awards of eternity after death — heaven for 
those who have been horn again, and an endless hell for 
the vast remainder of out race. 

What peculiar claims this theory has to be called 
u evangelical," I confess myself unable to see. It 
is not eminently reasonable, but since reason is so 
carnal, perhaps that is a circumstance in its favor. 



144 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

Nor is it strikingly Scriptural. Most of its funda- 
mental doctrines cannot be expressed in the simple 
language of inspiration. It commends itself neither to 
the unprejudiced intellect, nor the moral sense of man. 
It involves at every step very serious difficulties, which 
ages of earnest effort have been able neither to remove 
nor lessen. 

The doctrine of the trinity, which is a corner-stone 
of this evangelical system, falsely so called, is not 
merely unreasonable, but is unscriptural also. The 
Bible has no language in which it can be expressed, 
nor indeed can a proposition be framed in any lan- 
guage to express it, that will not involve a palpable 
contradiction. It is not a mystery as it is generally 
called, but an absurdity. ~No man can even conceive 
what he calls the trinity. One is comprehensible, and 
so is three, but a trinity, tri-unity, a three-oneness, is no 
more possible to human thought than is. a square 
triangle or circle. Practically indeed, Trinitarians 
themselves cannot maintain the doctrine even, to say 
nothing of the thing signified, in their own thoughts. 
For they will either fall away on the one side into 
positive tri-theism, and hold the doctrine of three 
coequal and coeternal Gods, or, on the other rise into 
absolute monotheism, sinking the pretended persons of 
the Godhead into three forms, appearances, or relations 
of one and the same being. Now these views may be 
called " evangelical," but they are not the doctrine of 
the New Testament. That teaches distinctly there is 
but one God, and that God is the Father. " To us," 



IDEAS OF EVANGELICAL EELIGION. 145 

says the Apostle, " there is but one God, the Father, of 
whom are all things, and we in him ; and one Lord. 
Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him ;" 
or, as it is expressed in another place, there is " one 
Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, 
who is above all." Thus, on this fundamental point of 
faith, the true evangelical doctrine is very simple and 
clear. Instead of the trinity, which can neither be 
explained nor conceived, we are by it taught that there 
is only one God, the Father, who is the supreme object 
of our love and adoration ; one Lord Jesus Christ, who 
is the Son and image of God, and the mediator between 
God and man ; and one Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God 
and the spirit of truth, whose office it is to enlighten 
and sanctify the human souL 

]STor are the popular evangelical doctrines concerning 
man, or human nature, either more rational or Scrip- 
tural. They maintain that since the first sin of Adam, 
the whole human race has been born sinful, " averse to 
all good, and inclined to all evil ;" and that from this 
corrupted nature all actual transgressions flow. They 
insist that by nature man cannot think a good thought, 
or perform a good action. Now, in opposition to this 
whole mode of thinking, we believe that human nature 
is right, and that sin is not, as this theory makes it, a 
natural and necessary product of its activity, but an 
abuse of what is capable of doing God's will and glori- 
fying his name. Besides, if man is born with a sinful 
nature, and is, by the very constitution of his moral 
being " averse to all good, and inclined to all evil," how 

7 



146 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

is he more blameworthy when he sins than the tiger is 
for killing a kid, or a bird for flying and singing ? All 
act alike in conformity with their natnre. If their 
nature is wrong, whose fault is it ? But the Bible gives 
no countenance to these errors. That always speaks to 
man and treats him as capable of obedience and virtue, 
and as blameworthy and exposed to punishment, only 
because, knowing his duty, he would not do it. Then it 
deserves to be considered that our own consciousness, 
and observation and history, all combine to refute the 
conceit of original sin and total depravity. The world 
around us and our own souls within us are not such, as, 
according to this mischievous theory, they should be. 
We meet with some great sinners, and " all here have 
sinned and come short of the glory of God," but there 
never yet lived the man who was wholly evil, for as 
Tholuck somewhere says, such a man would no longer 
be the being God made ; and as Coleridge remarks, he 
would be a devil at once. On this subject we would 
say with Bishop Butler, " Men may speak of the degene- 
racy and corruption of the world, according to the 
experience they have had of it ; but human nature, 
considered as the divine workmanship, should, methinks, 
be treated as sacred, for in the image of God made he 
manP This profound author thinks " we should learn 
to be cautious, lest we charge God foolishly, by ascrib- 
ing that to him, or the nature he has given us, which is 
owing wholly to our abuse of it." 

But if man is totally depraved when born, and grows 
worse and worse during his whole life, is it a thing 



IDEAS OF EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 147 

greatly to excite our wonder, that he should be regarded 
both by evangelical Christians and God himself, as fit 
only for perdition ? How could a being of infinite holi- 
ness look upon such a monster otherwise than with infi- 
nite displeasure ? Must not God hate him ? Must not his 
indignation burn against him forever ? Yet, strange to 
say, nothing is more certain in the gospel than the fact, 
explain it as we may, that God loved man, and loved 
him with infinite love, sinful and lost as he was. Even 
if he were an infinite sinner, and deserved God's 
infinite wrath and curse, still there stands the record, 
written in letters of light, that God loved the world, and 
so loved it, as to spare not his own Son, but delivered 
him up for us all. In this love of God the gospel finds 
its source. From this, as an inexhaustible fountain, flow 
the streams of salvation. 

And this leads me to &peak of the singular perversion 
which the evangelical theory of religion, so called, 
gives to the doctrine of atonement. Completely revers- 
ing the clear doctrine of the New Testament, it repre- 
sents Christ as interposing to placate the anger of God, 
and shield the poor sinner from his intolerable curse. 
According to the evangelical scheme of which I am 
speaking, Christ, by his sufferings and death, not only 
appeased the wrath of God, and satisfied his justice, but 
also reconciled him to his creature man. The doctrine 
of the Bible, the true evangelical doctrine, is, that " God 
was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." The 
Son did not come to make the Father more forgiving or 
more loving; but the Father, who is eternal Love, 



148 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

" sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world." To 
reconcile man to God, and save him from his sins, was 
the great object of Christ's mission, and in doing this 
he but does God's will and finishes his work. 

It need not be said that if man is totally depraved, any 
change of heart, any moral improvement, of whatever 
kind or degree, which takes place in him, must be 
simply miraculous. On this theory, he can have neither 
inclination nor power to turn himself, to repent of his 
sins, to hear the word, or, indeed, to do anything per- 
taining to a new life. He is as clay, cold and dead, in 
the hands of the potter ; or like a block of marble to be 
cast aside as worthless, or wrought by the hand of the 
sculptor into a form of divine beauty. But if such is 
the condition of man, of what use are the volume of in- 
spiration, the preached word, and all the various means 
of grace with which God has furnished the world ? 
"What significance have all the exhortations and threat- 
enings of the Gospel ? And why, above all, are mortals 
commanded to do, and held accountable for not doing, 
what is as impossible to them, as it would be to pluck 
the stars from the sky, or extinguish the fires of the 
sun? 

One of the gravest heresies of which our self styled 
evangelical brethren are guility, is to be found in their 
limiting the Holy One of Israel, and bounding the in- 
finite mercy of God by the narrowness of this world and 
the shortness of human life. Here for a little while, they 
concede, he does exhibit a stinted saving grace. But 
the moment the curtain of death falls behind a human 



IDEAS OF EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 149 

soul unredeemed, that moment God ceases to be its Fa- 
ther or to cherish for it a single feeling of affection or 
good will. Nay, that moment he becomes its immortal, 
implacable enemy. Instead of loving he hates it ; in- 
stead of blessing he curses it ; he no longer desires its 
welfare ; nor will he allow it a moment's rest or peace. 
All the infinity of the divine goodness within him is at 
once converted into vengeance, and he keeps such a soul 
in being only that he may make it feel all the fury of 
his anger, and suffer under the stroke of his almighty 
arm forever and ever ; and this is to be the final destiny 
of uncountable millions of our race. 

And such are some of the prominent features of our 
boasted " evangelical religion." Men entertaining such 
opinions take on airs and assume to look down with pity 
or contempt upon others who cannot see the beauty of 
their favorite theory and are not smitten with its charms. 
We are not insensible to the good opinion and sympathy 
of our fellow-men, but we cannot purchase them at the 
sacrifice of our own convictions of truth. We do not 
believe' in the so-called evangelical theory of religion, 
and we cannot disguise' our utter rejection of it. We 
regard it as a mischievous perversion of the Gospel of 
Christ, inconsistent alike with the calmest reason and 
the clearest testimony of the sacred Scriptures. Sin- 
cerely believing these Scriptures as we do, holding the 
Bible as the only and sufficient rule of faith and practice, 
we cannot do otherwise than reject a scheme of huraan 
device, which is so at war with the profoundest and 
most glorious truths of the Gospel. We turn away from 



150 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

the teachings of men only to cling the more closely to 
the infallible word of Christ. 

In the Gospel we see God revealed, not as an inexplic- 
able trinity ', but as One, the Creator of the universe, and 
the Father of the spirits of all flesh. He there stands 
before us as the greatest and best of all beings, possess- 
ing infinite perfections, and making himself glorious by 
their manifestation. " God is love." There, too, we 
see Christ, not as the second person of a trinity, but as 
the only begotten Son of the Father, the express image 
of God, the doer of God's will, and the Saviour of the 
world. In the Gospel, man appears as a moral being, 
made in the image of his Creator, and made to find his 
highest happiness in knowing and serving him. Igno- 
rant and sinful, an enemy of God by wicked works, 
Christ is sent into the world to seek and save him ; to 
bring him back to the knowledge of his Father, to re- 
deem him from his sins, and fit him, by love and holiness, 
for the peace that passes all understanding, and the joys 
of heaven. To this end Christ lived and labored on 
earth ; and for this end he suffered and died. The 
agonies of the cross were not designed to appease the an- 
ger of God, but to reconcile man. It is the love, not the 
wrath of Almighty God that streams forever from that 
bloody cross. As says the apostle, " God commendeth 
his love toward us, in that while we are yet sinners, 
Christ died for us." In the Gospel, as in providence, God 
is qver the friend of virtue and goodness, and the enemy 
only of what is at war with man's true welfare and 
happiness. And so Christ stands forth forevermore as 



IDEAS OF EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 151 

" the sinner's friend, 
But sin's eternal foe." 

Down through the ages the Gospel throws its clear 
and steady light. By it we see Christ going forth con- 
quering and to conquer ; and difficult as his path may 
be, and hard as the battle in which he engages, w r e are 
assured that "he shall not fail nor be discouraged till he 
have set judgment in the earth, and the isles shall wait 
for his law." Nay, as " Lord of all," both of the dead and 
of the living, his empire stretches beyond this life and 
this world, and embraces the whole race of Adam. And 
we have his gracious promise that he will not lay aside 
his sceptre of love till he has drawn all men to himself, 
till " every knee shall bow of things in heaven and things 
in earth, and things under the earth, and every tongue 
shall confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the 
Father." Then having subdued all things to his divine 
power, " the Son also himself shall be subject unto him 
that put all things under him, that God may be all ln 
all."^ 

This is the evangelical doctrine of the Bible. It 
knows no final evil. It exhibits sin as annihilated by 
the Saviour, and a world of lost souls as all restored. 
It places the glory of God not in the display of infinite 
vengeance, as useless as it is terrible, but in the victo- 
ries of his saving grace. " We are all one in Adam," 
says Tholuck, " as we shall be all one in the second 
representative of mankind ; and by the transgression of 
one the sinfulness of all appears, as the redemption and 
glorification of all is manifest in the archetypal life of 



152 KELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

the second." " Well may man, suffocated by the mist 
and tempest of this earth, cry out in the anguish of his 
soul," again says this evangelical man, " Watchman, 
what of the night ? Watchman, what of the night ? But 
to him who dwells in the eternal day, the sinful race 
has ever been present as redeemed.'' 7 And with Tholuck 
agrees Hengstenberg, one of Germany's ablest scholars, 
and most orthodox divines. Speaking of the curse pro- 
nounced upon the serpent in the Garden of Eden, he 
says, " Opposed to the awful threatening there stands 
the consolatory promise that the dominion of sin, and 
of the evil arising from sin, shall not last forever, but 
that the seed of the woman shall at some future time 
overthrow their dreaded conqueror." 



THE TENDENCIES OF THE AGE FRIENDLY 
TO LARGER YIEWS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

BY E. H. CHAPIN, D.D. 

Mr. President : I have been requested to say some- 
thing, on the present occasion, respecting the " Tenden- 
cies of the Age friendly to Larger Yiews of Christian- 
ity." This statement of the subject involves what I call 
a circular-proposition. If there are tendencies of the age 
friendly to larger views of Christianity, I think we may 
say that larger views of Christianity are producing cer- 
tain tendencies of the age, and it is proper for ns to con- 
sider the larger views of Christianity which are appa- 
rent in these tendencies. The remarks which I may 
make, at this time, therefore, will comprehend both 
these phases of fact. I will endeavor to keep some- 
where in the neighborhood of my theme, aiming, how- 
ever, not so mnch at verbal consistency, as at the truth 
which shows itself in this direction. 

Perhaps the first thing that strikes us, is the fact that 
this is an age of tendencies. An age of tendencies ra- 
ther than of fixed results. The history of mankind 
through all time, is but the revelation of a process. In 
distinction from many other epochs, we may characterize 
this as an age of great tendencies. If you ask me to 

>j* 153 



154 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

illustrate my meaning by instances, I point to the im- 
mense social problems which are now occupying the 
attention of men. Never before has the geology of 
society, with all its strata, conformable and unconform- 
able, been so heaved up to the surface. The questions 
of vice, crime, poverty, were never so thoroughly 
probed as now. Man was never brought so closely in 
contact with man. But, on the other hand, while these 
questions are probed and sifted, they are not settled. 
The problems are seen, but not solved ; yet, being seen, 
nobody can doubt the tendency of effort in this direc- 
tion. We cannot go back to our old positions of super- 
ficiality and indifference, we cannot plaster over these 
questions with a Christian sentiment of charity ; we 
cannot answer the great problems of poverty by resig- 
nation, or merely by appealing to the decent proprieties 
of alms-giving. You might as well attempt to put out 
the flames of Etna with a bottle of Cologne water ! "We 
have to probe these questions still more. But, notwith- 
standing the advances that have been made, the revolu- 
tions that have been produced, yet we have reached no 
fixed result. Speculation upon this subject is unmoored 
and set adrift, and no one can doubt what has excited 
this disturbance. 

Then again, there are the questions growing out of 
modem democracy. I mean genuine democracy. We 
know how much the existence and propagation of its 
principles unsettle established orders and rusty institu- 
tions. How impossible is the old quiet. See how the 
matter works. Europe is all sown over with grains of 



THE TENDENCIES OF THE TIME. 155 

gunpowder, while the emissaries of its kings are indus- 
triously at work blowing out everything that looks like 
light, and quenching everything that feels like fire. 
They must have a comfortable time of it — these conti- 
nental kings — feeling as if their thrones were built 
against a powder-mill, with Guy Fawkes at the back 
door. This principle of modern democracy has unsettled 
many things, but what has it settled ? What have we 
gained over ancient methods ? What has been our own 
gain as a nation ? We have many practical elements 
of freedom here at the North, but how long shall we be 
permitted to retain and use them, if the tendencies of the 
last few years are carried out ? The Declaration of In- 
dependence is repudiated. Take the first line of it, and 
drive it home to its logical conclusion with the beetle- 
weight of its moral force, and how many institutions 
among us it would split into kindling-wood, annihilate 
old rusty forms of order, and go through Tract Societies 
as if they were pine stumps ! 

We have many elements of freedom among us (which, 
however, we keep as in a glass case, merely to look upon 
on great occasions), but how long will these be pre- 
served ? We must speak of them even now with bated 
breath. Liberty with us is rhetoric, rather than logic ; 
a holiday show, rather than a work-day fact. Our prin- 
ciples of liberty are the insignia of dead heroes, rather 
than the coronation robes of living and acting powers. 
And yet no one can doubt the tendency of our modern 
democracy. 

There again, is our Anglo-Saxon civilization. It has 



156 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

accomplished great things, and beneficent things, but it 
sows tares with its wheat ; sends out rum and Bibles ; 
preaches to the heathen from the gospel of John, and 
blows them into kingdom come from the muzzle of 
cannon. 

There, too, are the changes and conflicts within the 
realms of theological opinion. Everything here is in 
process of transition. The Protestant world looks like a 
dissected map. What becomes of Evangelical Protest- 
antism ? It started with the rights of private judgment, 
but it does not allow that principle to be carried out. 
It has its own intellectual thumb-screws and methods of 
torture ; vainly endeavoring to hinder the right which 
at first it asserted. I say, then, these are great tendencies, 
and in their providential essence they are friendly to 
larger views of Christianity ; at least, I am sure that all 
the great movements attempted are thus essentially 
friendly. 

Such is the effect of our mechanical improvements, 
of our increased facilities for intercourse. As the 
earth's surface becomes compressed into a neighbor- 
hood, as nation is interlocked with nation, and we are 
brought into familiar contact with the vast outlying- 
tribes of man, we cannot rest content with any super- 
ficial conceptions of God's designs concerning the hu- 
man race, with any narrow methods of salvation. We 
cannot look upon these classes of men, that have never 
been favored with the blessing of the gospel, and sup- 
pose that they are doomed to everlasting damnation. 

Again, the conquests that we are gaining over the 



THE TENDENCIES OF THE TIME. 157 

material world — these busy fields of action, which 
open to the eager spirit of the nineteenth century — the 
discipline, the power, the vast historical and providen- 
tial results, which grow out of this extended area of 
thought and achievement, are friendly to larger views 
of Christianity. It is not easy on the one side to exag- 
gerate the moral dangers of this tendency, of this enor- 
mous objectivity and dazzling performance for which 
there is a compensating balance in Christianity alone — 
in its deep-shaded sanctity and hidden life of the soul. 
But this large and varied action, on the other hand, re- 
bukes all ascetic conceits, and teaches the religiousness 
of all life, and the sacredness of every field of effort. 

And so is science in its noblest revelations and 
achievements, friendly to larger views of Christianity. 
I do not speak particularly now of the connection be- 
tween science and revealed religion. Is it not about 
time that men should give up writing Bible geologies, 
Bible astronomies, and philosophical harmonies between 
the departments of sense and faith ? Is it not time this 
were done ? ]STot because Christianity is weak, but be 
cause it is strong — because it needs no other evi- 
dence than that it does the work which it came to do. 
Its witness is not in the accordance of the Hebrew text 
with the age of the Saurians, or with the nebular hy- 
pothesis ; but in the accordance of the divine life of 
Jesus with the weakness and sin of the human soul. 
Revelation and science do not cut each others orbit — 
they move on different planes. The kinds of evidence 
in the two cases are as different as anatomy and love — as 



158 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

the test of character and the test of a broken bone. What 
amount of metaphysical reasoning can overthrow your 
conviction of the law of gravitation 1 or of the revolu- 
tion of the earth ? On the other hand, wliat fact of 
science can take away your experimental conviction, 
that the teachings of Christ have carried exceeding 
peace into the chambers of your soul ? have exalted in 
your heart the love of God ? have comforted you in the 
turbulence of great sorrow, and opened for you an inner 
vision " which no calamity can darken ?" Even suppos- 
ing that two boulders from the pre-Adamite world 
should crash against the first chapter of Genesis, can 
that quench your thirst for divine life ? — can that can- 
cel the fact that Christ satisfies that thirst ? That man 
has but little genuine faith in his Bible who turns his 
reason into a dark lantern to read it by. Let him not 
be afraid that the freight of divine truth, which that 
book carries sublimely over the waves of ages, will ever 
be wrecked on any coast of scientific discovery. In no 
depth of strata shall we find anything older than the 
God it reveals. In no new system unfolding from the 
bright and awful mysteries of the sky will this yearn- 
ing, struggling, aspiring soul discover anything so need- 
ed as the salvation which that Bible brings, and the im- 
mortal bliss to which it leads the way. But while this 
is the case, Christianity does not require scientific har- 
monies or evidences. 

I do not speak thus because I detect anything hostile 
to Christianity in the largest range of modern discovery. 
The noblest scientific work of this day is a vindication 



THE TENDENCIES OF THE TIME. 159 

of religion from the most independent stand-point. 
But Christianity needs no patronage — it has strength 
enough of its own. But let us read the "Word of God in 
the light of his works, even as we interpret the works by 
the inner glories of his word. And as we carry the New 
Testament out into that vast cathedral, we find the glory 
of divine love upon its pages, blending with the revela- 
tions of that love from every crypt and corner of nature. 

It is a fact, then, that the great movements of the age 
— the great tendencies, whether we consider its devel- 
oped humanity, its vast field of work or of science — are 
friendly to larger views of Christianity. This in itself 
would be a slight thing, were it not also the fact that 
these larger tendencies do proceed from Christianity it- 
self — out from its deep core and centre, as you will 
find when you take Christianity out of its sectarian 
limitations, and open its leaves under the brightness of 
firmamental and everlasting truth. There are larger 
views of Christianity in the age, because the age, or the 
men in it, are becoming more Christian. 

Mr. Chapin here alluded to the city of New York, and 
the influence of the recent revival, and then passed on 
to speak of the latent tendencies among men to acknow- 
ledge the essential truth of Christianity. He said it was 
a common thing to hear people speak of ~New York as a 
great sink of corruption — that hell paints its ghastly 
frescoes on the walls. But ]STew York is not all corrupt 
— all abominable — all sensual. It is the great heart to 
which and from which flows the arterial current of a 
world. 



160 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

This very revival had shown the latent religions ten- 
dencies in the sonls of thousands toiling in the midst of 
its sensuality and its sin. He then proceeded to speak 
of the encouraging and discouraging aspects of the time 
so far as a more liberal and tolerant feeling is concerned. 
Sometimes, said he, it seems as if the millenium of 
brotherly love and Christian sympathy had arrived and 
then suddenly the pleasing vision is dispelled. Those 
of us who are familiar with the coast of New England, 
have often experienced the delight of one of those^clear, 
sparkling June, mornings, which bathe land and sea in 
such marvellous beauty, and do indeed make a " bridal 
of earth and sky." "We know, too, how by an instan- 
taneous whiff the entire scene has been transformed, and 
thin jackets and buoyant hearts have cowered, drenched 
and shivering, under the influence of what is called " a 
sea-turn." So is it with the religious atmosphere around 
us. There are times when everything is radiant with 
Christian love and harmony. When men feel in the 
depths of their hearts the recognition of the Christian 
life as the great font of Christian union, and that where 
the spirit of the Redeemer is, there He is. Then it is 
confessed, that even the Universalist, or the Unitarian, 
may be a genuine disciple, and that there is no heresy 
like the heresy of censorious judgment, or self-assumed 
orthodoxy. All is bright and clear. But this does not 
last long. There comes a sea-turn. From some quarter 
or another, the old leaven quickly shows itself, and in 
a moment we are chilled to the marrow, by the sour, 
salt, drizzling vapors of bigotry and exclusiveness. 



THE TENDENCIES OF THE TIME. 161 

Mr. Chapin then went on to consider the larger views 
of Christianity beginning to prevail. 

There are men who have thonght clear through the 
crust of sectarian dogmas, who cannot think away the 
substance of Christianity. They cannot apprehend it 
merely as an abstraction, as nothing more than a divine 
ideal floating before the vision of favored seers, or, than 
the intuitions of common consciousness, fusing into defi- 
nite shape. Out of all the siftings of free thought, out 
of the crucible of criticism, heated seven-fold, comes 
this conclusion, that we can account for Christianity 
only as a historical fact impinging upon the world, and 
organized in the life of the Redeemer. 
- Larger views of Christianity are indicated in the ten- 
dency to apprehend Christianity as not ecclesiastical, 
but human. The watch- word that runs along the ranks 
of the churches, is to advance from profession to prac- 
tice — from words to things — from traditions to work. 
This is the tendency now ; to regard the Church not as 
an institution to be kept apart from the world, because 
the world is common and unclean, but as the vital heart 
of faith and love, inspired by the divine life of Jesus, 
and sending abroad its streams of sanctification, until it 
shall be found that nothing is common or unclean. 
Christianity, like its founder, is going abroad in the 
world more and more as a power to seek and to save 
the lost. Joined to every human interest, and foremost 
in every noble work — penetrating the waste places of 
civilization as well as of barbarism — the heathenism of 
great cities as well as the dark lands of error — holding 



162 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

terms of peace with no abomination, and compromising 
with no human wrong. 

Mr. Chapin then alluded to the demands which Christ- 
ianity made upon institutions and churches, and cited 
the negro's prayer that the " Lord would rim-rack and 
centre-shake the devil's kingdom." There was a spirit 
in our age, which, unless the churches acted up to that 
spirit, would rim-rack and centre-shake them. 

Christianity goes forth now aiming to convert men, 
not to abstract opinions, but to make them one with the 
Father, whose love they have not returned, and with the 
Christ, whom they have never known ; members of that 
spiritual organism, that divine substance, which is more 
vital than creed, or ritual, or smoking incense, or sound- 
ing psalm — not contracting its field within the narrow 
limits of human tradition, or pampering its flock with 
the conceit of the elect, but convincing each of his rela- 
tions to all, contending in the strength of unfailing pro- 
mise, against the colossal evil that overshadows the 
world ; detecting the divine image in humanity, under 
all its abominations and its scars, purposing to overturn 
and to gather in, until there shall be one fold and one 
shepherd. 

We may notice, also, the tendency to recognize 
broader grounds of Christian union, than mere identity 
of intellectual belief. Never before has it been so nobly 
confessed, that we do not enter the fold of the Church 
by a logical ladder, but by the simple surrender of the 
heart's allegiance to Christ. 

The doctor proceeded here to speak of Jouett, Mau- 



THE TENDENCIES OF THE TIME. 163 

rice, Robertson, Florence Nightingale, Charming, Ar- 
nold, as essentially members of the true Church. 

There is the large-sonled brother, who preaches in 
Brooklyn, and who will permit every honest man to call 
him brother, however much he may differ in opinion 
from him — why, his great heart, at every pulsation, 
leaps sixty degrees beyond the logical limits of his 
creed. " The voice is Jacob's voice," " though the hands 
are the hands of Esau." 

The congregations are coming to represent .not sects, 
but religious affinities — men baptized into widely differ- 
ent creeds — men never baptized at all ; those, who, at 
last, have . discovered that they have been for many 
years embosomed in the wrong church — those who have 
never found any church that they could rest in — men 
whose heads have been clear enough, but whose hearts, 
until now, have not been touched — men whose hearts 
were all right, but whose heads were confused by intel- 
lectual perplexities ; all these find themselves coming 
together upon the floor of some edifice, which is to 
them truly a meeting house ; separated so long by pen- 
folds of creed, and glaring at each other over the hedge- 
fence of sectarianism, all at once they find themselves 
sitting in the same pew. Rambling over the waste re- 
gion of skepticism, not knowing what to do with Sun- 
day, except to lounge, or smoke, or ride it away, they 
have found that Christianity is not a dull chorus of homi- 
lies ; they have seen the tender image of Jesus looking 
into their own hearts, have felt the living inspiration of 
communion with him. Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, 



164: RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

Cretes, Arabians, and dwellers in Mesopotamia, have 
met together, where, by some miracle of spiritual apti- 
tude, each hears in his own tongue the truth of God. 

The orthodox believer finds himself chin deep in 
nominal heresy, but drinks of a fountain that really sa- 
tisfies his thirst. The heretic willingly passes under the 
crags of a stern theology to some place where his devout 
affections are awakened, and his heart finds peace. 

In all this some may detect only signs of decaying 
faith, and, as old Milton says, " prognosticate a year of 
sects and schisms." But let us not believe this. This 
shifting about does not prove indifference to divine 
truth, but it merely indicates larger views of Christian- 
ity. And with all its dislocations, I doubt whether any 
age has contained more genuine faith than this. 

"When men, instead of being anchored by the head, 
drift by the heart, we may believe that they are moved 
by some deep current of religious feeling, which is bet- 
ter than a shallow surface of conformity, or a dead calm 
of acquiescence. 

"With a thrilling and effective appeal to the young 
men of the Christian Union, to enter manfully and 
vigorously into the great harvest-field of moral action — 
to go forth in God's strength, exhibiting these larger 
views of Christianity in all the relations of life — to dis- 
card all selfish interest, and seek only to serve God in 
simplicity and truth — to follow under the guidance of 
Him, whose word is truth, and whose spirit is life — and 
an allusion to the prayer with which Bacon closed his 
great work, Mr. Chapin concluded his remarks. 



APPENDIX. 



FKUITS OF TKUE CATHOLICITY. 

The following letter embodies the concluding remarks 
of Dr. Osgood, which he had not time to deliver at the 
Anniversary. 

Mosswood, Faiefield, July 17, 1858. 

Gentlemen of the Publishing Committee: 

I am grateful to you for the interest expressed in 
my cursory remarks at the opening of the Anniversary 
Meeting of the Christian Union, and I am glad to com- 
ply with your request that I should carry out the line 
of thought upon the third point specified as originally 
intended. I took up as much time as proper regard for 
the rights of other speakers warranted, and I preferred 
to leave my address unfinished rather than to tres- 
pass upon my neighbor's privileges. The liberty of 
the pen, however, is not bound by any such limit as 
that of the tongue, and I will add some thoughts upon 
the fruits of that Catholicity which we anticipate in the 
Broad Church now rising throughout Christendom. 
In my view, Christendom has heretofore been divided 

165 



166 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

chiefly between two powerful classes of believers, who 
are distinguished each by a characteristic and exclusive 
idea. The first class, as we have seen, may be called 
the High Church, and is represented most consistently 
by the Roman chair. Its characteristic idea is the 
authority of an exclusive priesthood to dispense divine 
grace by ritual sacraments, which embody and apply 
the power of God's incarnation in Christ. The second 
class may be called the Low Church, and is represented 
most consistently by the Reformer Calvin and his fol- 
lowers. Its characteristic idea is the authority of the 
letter of Scripture as interpreted by a certain scheme of 
doctrine which dispenses the divine grace exclusively to 
the elect through saving and supernatural faith, in the 
merits of Christ's vicarious atonement. These two 
systems have left the strongest mark upon the history of 
Christendom, and even now,* with various modifications, 
divide the churches. The leading denominations are to 
be characterized by their affinity with the one or the 
other of the two. Thus all prelatical churches, whether 
Greek or Anglican, and all thorough-going Episco- 
palians, not excepting even Methodist Episcopacy, have 
a strong leaven of High Churchism in their composition. 
The extreme right of the Lutheran body inclines the 
same way and almost equals Rome in its claims to 
priestly authority and sacramental grace. The Presby- 
terians, Baptists, Orthodox Congregationalists and a por- 
tion of the Episcopal Church accept the Low Church 
idea and put far more emphasis upon their alleged 
Evangelical doctrine than upon their priesthoods. 



FHUITS OF TRUE CATHOLICITY. 167 

Yarious bodies of Christians sympathize only in part 
with either of these two classes. Tims Methodism, 
which claims for its discipline more power over its people 
than English Episcopacy dares claim, goes beyond Cal- 
vinism itself in its zeal for instantaneous conversion, and 
is in spirit, as in history, a mixture of rigid authority and 
emotional enthusiasm. Portions, moreover, of the nomi- 
nally priestly and Evangelical bodies are earnest 
champions of the New Catholicity, like the free theolo- 
gians of the Church of England and of our American 
Orthodox Congregationalists, whilst great numbers of 
noble men and women in all churches are impatient of 
the old exclusiveness, and looking for a new day of 
liberty and life. 

Towards these two classes I feel great respect, and 
believe that they have both been of great service to 
humanity — the High Churchman mainly by compre- 
hensive discipline and effective Christian nurture — the 
Low Churchman mainly by vindicating to all the liberty 
of reading the Scriptures, and by urging the need of 
personal repentance and regeneration. " We have many 
a quarrel with both for errors of practice and opinion, 
but we do not forget that both systems are forms in which 
our common humanity has shaped itself, and our posi- 
tion as Liberal Christians compels us to look for the 
redeeming qualities in the thought and action of all 
earnest bodies of our fellow men. "We do not wish even 
Romanism or Calvinism to die out until they are sup- 
planted by powers more effective than theirs, by a 
cosmopolitan largeness greater than that of Rome, and 



168 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

by an Evangelical zeal beyond that of old Geneva, 
We are all heirs of something of Hildebrand's grand 
visions of God's Kingdom among men, and we are all 
freer for Calvin's defiance of the Counsel of Trent and 
his appeal to God's grace by the Scriptures and the 
spirit above the traditions of men. "Within both these 
great divisions of Christendom thus indicated, we believe 
that divine graces and human virtues are working out a 
better future, and for many of the best thoughts and 
movements now acting upon Christendom, we are in- 
debted to men nominally in the ranks of Catholicism 
or Calvinism. Yet, with the systems themselves, we 
have little sympathy, and cannot for a moment limit 
God's grace or man's welfare to the prerogative of an 
exclusive priesthood or to the influence of an exclusive 
dogma. Not inside but outside of the circle of the 
transubstantiated wafer and the magical creed, we look 
for the most significant signs of the good time coming, 
and we cannot for a moment believe that the welfare of 
humanity is shut up in the Trent Catechism or the 
"Westminster Confession. Nay, there is now in all the 
leading minds of Christendom a certain leaven of 
heresy, and they whom earnest souls hear and follow 
most gladly, cannot easily pass muster under the old 
standards of Orthodoxy. They cannot see any such utter 
antagonism between nature, man and God, as is implied 
in the ghostly penances of Catholicism or the doctrines 
of total depravity and passive conversion as held by 
the Calvinist creeds. Our new Christian thought car- 
ries its philosophy of reconciliation into every sphere, 



FRUITS OF TEUE CATHOLICITY. 169 

and in building the new temple, it calls on nature for the 
materials, and man for the worship, and God for the in- 
spiration. No better name for the rising church can be 
given than that which Christ's own divine and human 
character supplies. Call it the Church of the Divine 
Humanity, and as such, let it accept and use all the 
worthy elements of the two great dynasties that have 
preceded. Catholicism, with its Church of the Incar- 
nation and priestly authority ; and Calvinism, with its 
Church of the Atonement and elective grace. It is 
cheering to know that there has been from the begin- 
ning a broad church movement virtually like ours. We 
see it in such minds as Justin, Clement, and Origen of 
the primitive age ; in such liberals as Erigena and 
Abelard, and such devotees as Eckart and Tanler of the 
middle ages, and in all the freest and best minds of the 
Protestant times, whether in the Old World or the 
ISTew, from the days of Arminius to those of Channing, 
Arnold, and their peers. 

In speaking of the New Catholicity that is now giving 
signs of its- power over man, it becomes us to take a 
very modest tone and to beware of claiming to ourselves 
or our favorite champions the glory that belongs to God 
himself, and to the humanity which he is inspiring. 
Our best thoughts and purposes are not our own but 
his, and they come to us through a reason which is his 
gift to us and our race, and by a Providential discipline 
which he has provided. We cannot exclude even what 
is called the world, or our secular civilization, from his 
jurisdiction, and the new sciences and arts that are 

8 



170 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

bringing mankind into such unprecedented community 
of thought and action, have come from the study of his 
laws and must work out his majestic plans. They 
promise in their own plane to illustrate the divine order 
of our humanity in its higher spheres, by showing that 
all material agencies and natural principles tend to a 
common centre, and in their vast diversity lead to a 
mighty unity. The old creeds that were formed in igno- 
rance of natural laws are trying in their way to patch up 
an alliance with the new science and art, but they can- 
not do it without removing some of their cardinal 
principles, and it may matter little to the Liberal Christ- 
ian whether liberal views are to triumph under the 
lead of wholly new organizations, or the new wine is to 
be kept for a season in the old bottles, if only the new 
wine is allowed to do its work and the new life appears. 
What significance there is, for example, in the fact, that 
whilst the old languages of theology are becoming obso- 
lete and the phrases of the "Westminster Catechism are 
as unintelligible to the majority of active men now as 
the Latin of the Romish Mass, our Christendom has 
lately received from art and science two languages, that 
are read and understood wherever civilization is known. 
The language of mathematics and the language of 
music are now the same throughout Christendom, nay, 
throughout the globe, the one in the sphere of business 
and exact science, the other in the sphere of sociality 
and sentiment, and they both unite in calling for a 
Catholicity of idea and feeling that must shame the shib- 
boleths of sects and the anathemas of church councils. 



FRUITS OF TRUE CATHOLICITY. 171 

The Catholicity of the future must not apologize for 
art or science, whether to sacrifice music to the harp of 
David, or astronomy to the fame of Moses or Joshua. 
It must start with the doctrine, that nature, humanity, 
and God belong to the same universe, and a true wis- 
dom will study all diversities of beings and powers with 
an eye to the overruling order. So far as human affinities 
are concerned, the aim will be to bring men into such 
relations that each shall be free to use his own gifts and 
earnest to promote the supreme good. The true charity 
is that which thus combines liberty with order, and by 
its harmony of differences tends to a unity more majes- 
tic than any of Hildebrand's visions of the triumphs of 
the kingdom of God, that he saw descending from hea- 
ven upon the hills of the eternal city. 

This Catholicity is to be seen as never before in the 
relations of man to nature, alike in what we receive 
from nature by our senses, and what we impress upon 
nature by our force of thought and will. The old creeds 
were formed by men who looked upon nature as ac- 
cursed, and regarded life as heavenly, precisely as it be- 
came unnatural. Hence the doctrine of the mortifica- 
tion and even the death of natural affections, instead of 
their true consecration. Catholicism and Calvinism 
both share in this ghostly view of the accursedness of 
natural things, and both must renounce or modify their 
doctrines if 'they would not shut their eyes to the new light 
that is breaking in upon the system of nature, and reveal- 
ing the handiwork of God, not the devices of the devil. 
"We must not forget that the men who invented the doc- 



172 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

trine of infant damnation, total depravity, and the like, 
looked upon the simplest natural affections as degrading ; 
and the ghostly monks who formed the darkest portions of 
the popular theology, believed that God was to be propi- 
tiated by fastings and scourgings, yet that he refused his 
highest graces to men and women who .took marriage 
vows, and so became parents, and took their own children 
to their arms. Calvinism shared largely in the old monk- 
ery, and there was far less of the warm blood of healthy 
nature in the pulse and the pages of Calvin than of Lu- 
ther. Luther, by his genial temperament, did as much 
for Christendom as by his theology. His lute and his 
musical voice, his genial companionship with his family 
and friends, were a mighty protest on behalf of nature 
against ghostly austerity, and made him as much an 
emancipator of life itself from bondage as of the Book 
of Life from proscription. The end is not yet, and we 
shall never know the true remedy for all lusts and 
excesses, until the proper study and use of nature secures 
the consecration of the senses and gives the death-blow 
to sensuality. 

The new Catholicity shall show itself in the relations 
of man with his own race as well as with nature. Sure- 
ly we cannot live alone, and for good or ill we must 
have society. The old Catholicity in its way understood 
this want, and marvellously provided for the social in- 
stinct by the most elaborate and powerful and various 
associations. ISTo gift of intellect or enthusiasm or energy 
was neglected, and every devotee was encouraged to 
use his own talent in the fellowship most inspiring to 



FEUITS OF TRUE CATHOLICITY. 173 

himself and most useful to the church. The new Catho- 
licity must give a still broader and higher range to our 
human powers and affections in spheres not ruled over 
and narrowed by priestly exclusiveness. We must 
claim all that is truly human as part of our birthright, 
and cherish it sacred and affectionately, no matter in 
whatever sect or nation it may be found. We must ac- 
cept the principle so well sanctioned by reason and 
scripture, that we find the whole and true humanity not 
in the individual, but the whole race ; and that when 
we do our part most effectively as one member of the 
Lord's body, we feel most emphatically the working of 
the other members and follow the guidance of the divine 
head. This idea, if consistently carried out, will esta- 
blish new and better fellowship between man and man, 
leading different temperaments, classes, sects, and na- 
tionalities to integrate themselves by sympathy and co- 
operation, and insisting upon no less a magna-charta in 
our great heritage of humanity, than that • given by the 
apostle in those memorable words: "All things are 
yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." 

The sense of human fellowship, which is so important 
alike in the privilege conferred and the service demand- 
ed, does not end with this earthly life, but extends to 
the humanity that has passed into the spiritual world. 
We belong to all men, and all men belong to us, and what 
we all feel in our literary and patriotic fellowships, we 
are surely not to forget in our Christian communion. The 
saints and sages of our race are still' ours as truly as the 
loved ones who have gone from our homes; and it is a most 



174 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

interesting fact that the sense of fellowship between the 
living and dead, which has been so strong and vital in the 
ancient Church, is returning to use from quarters little 
inclined to yield to mere traditions. The Positivism of Au- 
guste Comte asserts in the most decided manner the essen- 
tial continuity and solidarity of the human race, whether 
living or dead, and tries to make a new religion of the 
worship of the dead, which, in its great absurdity, in- 
timates a vital truth. Our popular Spiritualism, with 
all its follies, surely testifies to the same leading idea, 
and is interesting as showing the decided belief of 
multitudes in the connection between the living and 
dead. But Positivism and Spiritualism are mere shadows 
without that faith in the presence of God's spirit with 
men, which gives the race its only unity here, and prom- 
ise of continuity hereafter. 

So it is, that truly human fellowship rises into reli- 
gion, and man does not find himself one with his brother 
except by finding him in God. The sense of God's 
presence in the human soul is the crowning assurance 
of our divine birthright, and the Holy Spirit gives the 
true communion. Every age of the Church has known 
this power, but its jurisdiction has been sadly limited 
by creeds and ceremonials, so that inspiration has been 
regarded as belonging, if not exclusively to the old 
Bible men, at least to certain mystical experiences at 
sacred times and places. Its power is to be claimed 
and known in the whole domain of life, in every capa- 
city and faculty, in every duty and enterprise. Our 
best thinkers are teaching us that in the most practical 



FEUITS OF TRUE CATHOLICITY. 175 

sense all wisdom begins in the consciousness of God's 
presence, and' all true energy goes forth in the might of 
his will. "We need to apply this doctrine, not only in 
awakening sinners, but in enlightening and strengthen- 
ing believers. Quite sure we are that in the track of the 
great revival which has been sweeping through our 
church, and in which we have all somewhat shared, no 
better movement could follow than an earnest effort to 
arouse and energize the millions now reposing upon 
their laurels, and thinking themselves saints of God 
because they once knew the pains of penitence and the 
peace of forgiveness. Our American churches need a 
broader and stronger doctrine of divine influence than is 
often preached in the pulpit, or held in the pews. We 
need a spirituality that shall be practical, and a practice 
that shall be spiritual. "We need a faith that counts life 
but death without God's presence, and which carries the 
sense of God's presence into all work as well as into all 
worship. We need a fellowship that enjoys God in 
working for him, and works for him by enjoying him — a 
fellowship that looks for heaven here and hereafter not 
merely by escaping hell, and entering upon an existence 
of dreamy inaction, but which regards true love and 
true service as in themselves heavenly, and as now 
opening the life eternal, or communicating the infinite 
and imperishable good. We need a hope that looks to 
better things than to repairing the mischief of poor 
Adam's lapse, a hope that shall look not merely to recov- 
ery from that fall, but to the consummation of the Crea- 
tor's majestic plans for the discipline and welfare of the 



176 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

race which he created in his own image, and which he 
can never dismiss from his care. Our humanity be- 
comes true as it is loyal to his plan, and so rules over our 
earthly fellowships as best to foreshadow and hasten the 
coming of that kingdom where all souls bless each other 
in being blessed by God, and being free in their own 
rightful orbits whilst true to the supreme order, they 
follow the law of divine attraction and enter upon 
heavenly peace. 

I have thus given some hints of the new Catholicity 
in its relations with nature, man and God, according to 
the doctrine of the Divine Humanity which we find in 
Christ and his Church. That we may not end in mere 
generalities, let me say that if the question is asked, by 
what organization, sect or institution, is this great move- 
ment to be carried out, we reply that all true thinkers 
and workers are to do their part. It is difficult to say 
what will be the future of the great divisions of the pre- 
sent church, whether they will tend, as in the primitive 
age, towards fusion under some central power, or 
whether the spirit of disintegration will continue as for 
the last three centuries, and the only unity shall be an 
agreement to differ. There have been many attempts 
to fuse together the various branches of the High 
Church, and Oxford in our day has fondly cherished 
the dream of uniting all bishops again under the bishop 
of Eome. Such a thing may be, but we have no faith 
in any such event. Schemes of union between different 
branches of evangelical orthodoxy have generally failed 
and must do so if they require anything like substantial 



FRUITS OF TRUE CATHOLICITY. 177 

agreement. The last scheme, however, has come near- 
est success, and the establishment of Young Men's Chris- 
tian Associations has aimed to bind together young men 
of all Evangelical denominations, as they are called, 
into a practical fellowship. These associations have un- 
doubtedly done much good, especially by giving society 
and comfort to young men who are strangers in our 
cities, and by favoring a higher tone of thought and 
enterprise among our youth. We object only to the 
exclusion of Christians of other orders from their favor, 
and we cannot for a moment identify ourselves with 
any movement that denies to a Roman Catholic, or 
a TJniversalist, or a Unitarian, or a New Churchman, 
the Christian name and privilege. The worst ten- 
dency of such associations is to check manly freedom 
of thought, and to bring the force of numbers and 
patronage to bear in favor of that spirit which is quite 
too prevalent in this country, the disposition to fall 
in with the majority and to count votes instead of 
weighing evidence. We dislike the tyranny of banded 
sects quite as much as that of banded factious or legions. 
We who are Liberal Evangelical do not desire to enlist 
in behalf of our own views the machinery of exclusive- 
ness which we observe in the Orthodox Evangelical. 

The disposition of other classes thus to band together 
calls upon the friends of liberal thought to stand up for 
their principles, and hence your opposition rises, not in- 
deed on any antagonism towards others, but in attach- 
ment to your own ground. Your association has made 
no ambitious claims to public favor, and began in a 



178 RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE AGE. 

modest and unostentatious way. You have done far 
more than you promised, and I may say as one who at- 
tended your first meeting in the library of this church, 
that I have watched your proceedings with solicitude 
and satisfaction, and with you I heartily rejoice in the 
abounding success of this representative assembly, with 
its unexpected numbers and enthusiastic interest. I 
rejoice especially in your reverential temper ; and am 
glad that whilst you are not ashamed to be considered 
" Liberal," you are determined also to be Christian, and 
to labor and hope for a noble future of the Liberal 
Evangelical ranks. 

Your platform is a very important and consistent one. 
You meet together as Christians, owning your rights of 
opinion, and not even presuming to make the vote of a 
majority the rule in any matters of belief. You allow 
Catholic and Calvinistic the same liberty of expression 
that you enjoy yourselves, and you will not silence them 
by your vote, or exclude them by your denunciations. 
Yet practically you find yourselves mainly depen- 
dent upon the liberal denominations for sympathy and 
aid ; and the style of thought at this meeting is such 
as must place you outside the lines of the popular and 
exclusive theology. Be not ashamed of your position, 
and doubt not that the next twenty-five years will bring 
such changes over public opinion, that the minutes of 
these discussions will seem to have been prophetic of 
coming events, and our heresy may look very much like 
the then current orthodoxy. As the world now is, you 
have the spirit of science, literature, and art upon your 



FKTJITS OF TRUE CATHOLICITY. 179 

side, and the strongest men of Christendom, even with- 
in the ruling churches, virtually favor your principles. 
You will keep your decision and your charity, abiding 
by your personal convictions, yet willing to accept light 
from every quarter, aiming to do your own work bravely, 
yet remembering that God's providence and grace are 
greater than our poor thought and will. In God's 
hands we leave the catholicity of the future, and the 
harvest of its blessed fruits. 

I remain, Gentlemen, in Christian fellowship, 
Tour friend and servant, 

Samuel Osgood. 



THE END. 



AN OUTSIDE VIEW OF AMERICA!? INSTITUTIONS, 

AND THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE 
AMERICAN PEOPLE. 

THATCHEK & HUTCHINSON have just published a book 

of extraordinary power and interest entitled 

SHAHMAH IN PURSUIT OF FREEDOM; 



THE BRANDED HAND. 

That an instinctive love of freedom is inhaled in the very 
atmosphere of mountainous countries, will not be questioned by 
any close observer of mankind ; it, therefore, is not surprising 
that there should exist a race, even among the mountainous por- 
tions of Algeria, which should furnish one earnest seeker after 
a true freedom. 

Shahmah was not only a superior specimen of his race, but 
such an enthusiast had he become in his admiration of freedom, 
that lie early resolved to make it the study of his life. During 
his collegiate studies, having formed the acquaintance of an 
American gentleman who kindly furnished him with a copy of 
the Declaration of American Independence, and gave him a 
glowing description of the beauties of our "Free Institutions," 
he at once resolved to visit our land, in order to become inti- 
mately acquainted with the interior working of a system founded 
on such a perfect basis. 

In his straightforward simplicity of character and earnestness 
of purpose, he of course finds great difficulty in reconciling his 
preconceived opinions with the manners and customs of the 
country; but his is not a heart to faint at the appearance of 
apparent obstacles, and while he sees things as they are, he does 
not lose his faith in the possibilities of the future. 

There is a freshness about his narrative that none but a highly 
gifted mind, from his peculiar standpoint, could attain, rendering 
the book extremely fascinating to the lover of romance, while it 
affords the deepest study to the philosopher, and opens a rich 
field of prophecy to the lover of his race. 

In short, it is a book that will touch the hearts of the people, 
and will have its thousands of readers and admirers. 

The following is all the Table of Contents for which we have 
room: 



CONTENTS 



Translator's Preface, 



HISTORICAL SKETCH 



Kabyles distinguished for their love of Liberty — Characteristic Traits— Their supposed 
Descent — Language — Shahmah elected Chief — Declines — Philosophical Pursuits — Goes 
with his Brother to Algiers — They enter the Kabyle College — Attract the Attention of 
Mr. F. — Systematic Study — Success — Shahmah Embarks for the United States, . 21 

LETTEE I. 

SHAHMAH'S THEORY OF NATIVE AMERICANS. 

Shahmah's Theory of Native Americans — Retrospective Thoughts — His Hopes confirmed 
thereby — Novelties — Sea-sickness — A Storm — Misgivings — Theory of American Cap- 
tives — Condition of Common Sailors — Ideal of a Free Country — Want of Sympathy — 
Officers do not understand him — The Sea and Desert — Declaration of Independence — 
Yearning for Rest and Home, ........ 29 

LETTEE II. 

SHAHMAH LEARNS MORE ABOUT THE SAILORS. 

Shahmah learns more of the Sailors' Habits — Riot Ashore — Mistake corrected — Sailors 
not Captives — Talk with William Jones — Flogging in the Navy — How abolished — 
Byron's Corsair — Commodore's Tyranny — Reproof and Punishment — Severity vindi- 
cated—Social Prayer— Formal Prayer— Channing— Homeward Thoughts, . 38 

LETTEE III. 

THE CRIMSON SCORPION OP THE SOUTH. 

The Crimson Scorpion of the South— Glooms — Change of Scene — The Voice — The Form 
—The Car— The Red Hand— The Black Hand— The Victims— The Branded Hand— The 
High Priest— Apis and his Masking Neighbor— Bullying— Subserviency— Scorpion 

X* ix 



X CONTENTS. 

Threats— Scorpion Worship— Offerings to the Idol— Incense — Renewed Roaring— The 
Moving Car— Usurpations and Triumphs of the Scorpion— Waking of the Free— The 
Mask Falls— Thunder of Freedom— A too bracing Current— A Collapse— Joy of the 
Angels— Angel of the North— Angel of the South— The Scorpion disappears— The 
Broken Chains — The Sister Angels meet and embrace, .... 48 

LETTER IY. 

SHAHMAH TALKS ABOUT THE SHIP. 

Shahmah talks about the Ship— Truth reaffirmed— The Mother Land— The Sea a power- 
ful but obedient Vehicle of Human Power— Structure of the Ship— Who and what 
built it — Pithy Questions and dry Answers — Arrival — Quiet — Negroes — Harbor — 
The city Wonders multiply— Home-Land, ...... 64 

LETTER V. 

SHAHMAH MAKES AN ASTOUNDING DISCOVERY. 

St. Charles Hotel— Populous Solitude— The True Democrat — No Outbreak— Questions 
still Unanswered — Engrossing Topics — Pleasant Interruption— New Host— Mrs. Slicer 
— The Family Servants— Garden of "Delights — The Strange Children— New Wonders 
— New Fears — A Scene of Terror — A New Discovery, . . . .74 

LETTER VI. 

A STORY OP NEW LIFE INTEREST. 

Flowers and Birds — Power and Mission of Beauty — Sketching and Story-telling— The 
half Brothers — The Donna Cecile — The Stolen Marriage — The Happy and Successful 
Husband — Theodosia — The Padre and Madame Laurette — Love in the Distance — 
Premonitions — Shahmah Laughs at the hovering Cupid, . . . .86 

LETTER VII. 

THE QUEEN LILY AND THE LILY QUEEN. 

Remarkable Impressions — The Flower and the Flower Angel — The Eyes of the World — 
First Looks — First Words — Beauty and Bewilderment — Innocent Confessions — The 
Father — The Tutor — The Governess — An Evening of Delights — Resolves to be Disen- 
chanted — Resolves the Enchantment is good — Restless Night — Light and Joy of the 
Morning — Shahmah is not Blind — The Departure — Promised Reunion, . . 99 

LETTER VIII. 

MR. SLICER' S THEORY OP SHAVING. 

Power and Virtue of the True Democrat— Shahmah reflects and grows Enthusiastic — Re- 
solves to unbosom himself — Rushes to meet Mr. Slicer — Sudden fall of the Mercury — 
Recovers himself— Attempted Explanation — A new Failure — Mr. Slicer's amiable Con- 
fidence—Shaving Fairly— Dinner— Guests— A Startling Question— A more Startling 
Answer — Great Sensation — Exit Mr. Slicer — Exeunt Omnes, . - 112 



CONTENTS. XI 

LETTER IX. 

MR. SLICER'S THEORY OF SABBATH DUTIES. 

Specific Uses of the Sabbath— Impiety of Birds and others— Special Rights and Duties 
of the Day — Morning Service with Mr. Sheer — A Remarkably Original Sermon — Af- 
ternoon Service with Mrs. Sheer — Impious Charities— True Social Relations of the 
Sexes— Momentary Reunion— Zindie and her Husband— A Second Walk— Sim, the 
Negro— His Eloquence— Morning-Beauty and Joy of Nature, . . . 120 



LETTER X. 

SHAHMAH RESOLVES TO BE DISENCHANTED. 

French Market— Chain G-ang— The Indians ; their Character, Power, and Destiny— The 
Silent Letter — The Picture — Triumphant success — Effect on Theodosia— Dreams and 
Studies — Art and the Artist — An Excursion — The Flowers — Innocent Questions and 
sorrowful Answers — Shahmah feels his Danger — Returns to Mrs. Sheer's, . 138 



LETTER XI. 

MRS. SLICER TELLS ANOTHER STORY. 

Horrible Discoveries— Peculiar Constitution and Genius of Mrs. Sheer — Love of Flowers— 
The Captive Lily — Unexpected Confidence — Mrs. Sheer's Father — His Overseer — His 
Sudden Illness — The Forced Marriage — The Orphan Bride — Determination to obey — 
Servants left unprotected— Loss of these Humble Friends — Shahmah cannot again close 
his eyes to the horrible truth— His guiding Star is dark and distant, . . 152 

LETTER XII. 

MR. SLICER'S FANCY ARTICLES. 

The Foster Sister — Her Sufferings and Wrongs — Minna and Brenda — Their Education 
and Destiny — Price of Wickedness — Even the Innocent tainted — Mrs. Sheer feels 
herself Dishonored — Her Duty as a Woman violated — Impossibility of Right when 
bound by Wrong— Despair of Shahmah— His Star seems to set in Darkness— Reac- 
tion— Prolonged Conflict— The Star Reappears, . . . . . 161 

LETTER XIII. 

SHAHMAH SEES THE MASTER OF LIFE. 

Recovered Strength and Hope — Charming Excursion — Confidential Tete-a-Tete — His 
Hopes encouraged — A Sacred Trust— Beautiful Gift for Youley — Aunt Sukey and 
Zindie — Apparent Plotting — Terrible Apprehensions — Genius and Spirit of our Institu- 
tions still true — A Remarkable Vision— What are Dreams ? . . .171 



Xll CONTENTS. 

LETTER XIV. 

SHAHMAH WITH HIS NEW FRIENDS. 

Up the River— The Navigation— Dangers— Mechanism of the Boat — Dignity and Power 
of the True Worker — Phenomena — Scenery — Baton Rouge— Mr. Clement— Interest and 
Sympathy — Mr. Poydras — Landing — The Coachman — Ride Home — Reception — Mrs. 
Clement — The Children — Mr. Van Brouer — Undennable Attraction — Dr. Bowen, 183 

LETTER XV. 

SHAHMAH ENLARGES HIS POLITICAL SPHERE. 

Home Memories— The Scarlet Bean— Retrospection— Horrible Discovery— The Southern 
"Whig — A Mortifying Dilemma — Democratic Meeting— Stump Speeches — A Great 
Speech— Hoosier Courtesy— Return to first Principles— Questions without Answers, 195 

LETTER XVI. 

SHAHMAH IN HIS NEW SURROUNDINGS. 

Reviving Happiness — Order — Comfort — Letter from Home — Herborizing — Mr. Van 
Brouer— The Attraction and Mystery deepen— The Chamber— Prospects of the Coun- 
try — Plantations — Woods — Cane-brake — Anticipated Confidence and Freedom — A 
Dream, ........... 205 

LETTER XVII. 

shahmah's THEORY OP HUMPS. 

Home News — Egypt— True Strength of Nations— Servants of the Family — The Corporal 
Aunt Phillis— Samson and his Family — Mary Ann— Little Massa — Love and Loyalty — A 
Pleasant Walk — A Remai-kable Organ — Difficulty of Investigation — Shahmah theorizes 
— Hypothesis of Origin— Robert enters — Levity and Gravity, . . . 211 

LETTER XVIII. 

THEY CELEBRATE THE FOURTH OP JULY. 

Shahmah's first Conjugation — The Verb to Love — Robert's Warning— Pine- Woods — The 
Heart's Mystery — The Great Anniversary — The Corporal's Stories — The Botanists go 
Down— Picturesque Scene-^Storming of Fort Moultrie— Thrilling Effects of the Narra- 
tive — Another Voice — Simao Appears — Speech and Exit— Incident — Reflections — Mr. 
Van Brouer— Home Yearnings, . 223 

LETTER XIX. 

ROBERT'S HISTORY OF MR. SIM. 

Simao visits Shahmah— Some Account of Himself— Fears Separation— Speaks more freely 
of Himself— Terrible Sense of his Condition— Exit Simao — Enter Robert — Begins the 
Story— Remarkable Fund of a Christian Church— Death— Exchange— The Benefactress 
—Bound by Kindness— True to Trust— A Mutual Pledge, . . . .232 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

LETTER XX. 

KINDRED SPIRITS MEET AND MINGLE. 

Letters from Home— Mustapha— Sufferers of Yefran — An Impression — The Sage— Beau- 
tiful Tableau— Involuntary Entrance— Recognition — Eeasons of former Repulsion — 
Mr. Yan Brouer cheers and encourages Shahmah — Instruction to Servants— Samson 
a Landholder— Intended Removal North — Mr. Van Brouer's New York Establishment 
— Sudden Faintness— Shahmah recovers his Speech — The Doctor comes— His prescrip- 
tion — Demonstrations of promised Pleasure— The Children — The little Negroes— The 
Mocking-bird, .......... 239 

LETTER XXI. 

SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 

Trip to Baton Rouge— Site of the City— Its chief Features— Capitol— Asylum for Deaf 
and Dumb — Garrison Grounds — Market— State Penitentiary — House of Gen. Taylor 
— Asylum Grounds — Ride into the Country — The Party rest — Fine Position and 
Prospect — An Arrival — Lewis Paine — Slavery how and how far Sanctioned — Only 
Protection that of Property — Ineffectual and Insecure — The Position of Owner and 
Owned trying and unnatural — Sarah Grinke — Madame Lallorme — Atrocious Murder 
— Another Yictim— Indecent Exposure—Female Chattel— Subservience of the 
Churches — Divorce — Negro Wit — Honorable Testimony to the Character of South- 
erners — The fortunate Quadroon — Exultation — Envy and Jealousy — Unwomanly 
Consolation — Great Bundle of Wrongs— Elastic Power of the Negro— The Children 
come in— Return, . . . . . . . . . 248 

LETTER XXII. 

LOGIC DILUTED— PREMONITIONS. 

Approaching Festival — Ride with a Clergyman — Mary Ann the Mulatto — A Wrong with- 
out Remedy — Tremendous Responsibility — Gospel of Jesus — Does it sanction these 
things— Gospel of Humanity — Transcends that of Mahomet— Essence of Christianity — 
Golden Rule Christ's own— Name of Christian repudiated— Concession— Yisit to 
Theodosia — Weeping — Fears — Tantalizing Distance — The Walk — She reveals the Cause 
of her Despondency — Cruelty ignoble and degrading — Theodosia's Sorrow for the Slave 
Woman— Desires Free Speech and Action— Better News, .... 264 

LETTER XXILT. 

THE NEGRO HOLIDAY. 

Delightful Evening — Negro Music, its Character and Power — When will Love always 
Speak Truly, and the Affections be Harmonious '—Marriage a Science of the Soul — 
Mrs. Sheer — Simao and Zindie — Dancing begins — Whites join — Pat Juber for Music — 
Whites tire — Wonderful Feats of the Negro Dancers — The " White Eye " — Lemonade 
instead — Scene closes — They retire Singing, but more sadly — Reaction of Festival 
Seasons — Sadness of Leave-taking heightened by the Rarity and Uncertainty of a 
Return— Meditated Escape— Walk Home with Theodosia— Beautiful Night Scene— The 
Indian's Song— The Negro— Song of Atkah— Shahmah hears, reflects and questions 
of his Hope, .......... 273 



XIV CONTENTS. 



LETTER XXIV. 

SPECIFIC CHARACTERS OP THE HUMAN RACE. 

Theodosia's Request— Anecdote of Madame de Stael — Th'j Southern Liberators — Profes- 
sor Cassuite, Capt. Brande, Mr. Wells, and others — Presence of Women in these Dis- 
cussions beautiful and important — True Offices of Woman— Importance of the Subject 
— The Scripture Argument — Negroes inferior — Fever Spots on the Nose — Organic Dis- 
similarity of Races — Specific Characters defined — Hybrids not permanently Fertile — 
Color, Organic Proportions, and Texture of the Hair, remarkably subject to Change — 
— True Specific Characters — Anomalous Structure — Remarkable Instances of a Change 
in Color — Dondoes — Jews— Remarkable Instances of Persistency of Color in Lower Ani- 
mals — Reasons for Infertile or Inferior Offspring produced between hostile Races — 
Men universally recognize the Human in each other — Discriminating Interest of Theo- 
dosia — Pleasing Intelligence — Repeated Processes of Refinement — Mrs. Clement's 
Theory — Mission of Womanhood— Arabic Proverb, . . . 284 

LETTER XXV. 

INTELLECT OF THE NEGRO VINDICATED. 

The Professor's Opinion— The Doctor's Reply— Instances of Physical Beauty in the Negro 
—Instances of Inferior Whites— Slavery degrades and depraves the Type— Men im- 
prove as they recede from it— Remond and Frederic Douglas— William Wells Brown — 
Rev. Mr. Pennington— A Poser from Mrs. Clement— Monumental History— Inherent 
Tendency to Civilization— August Origin of the Negro— Wisdom of Ethiopia— Teachers 
of Solon Pythagoras and Plato — Euclid the African — Grecian Minerva represented as 
an African— Barbarous Progenitors of the White Race— Ancient Britons— Cicero's 
opinion of English Slaves — Progress of the Russians— Caspar Hauser — Physical 
Characters changed by Education— German Girl living with Swine— Deterioration of 
expelled Irish— Negro Traits, . . . . . * . .300 

LETTER XXVI. 

REMARKABLE AND DISTINGUISHED NEGROES. 

Theodosia's Picture — Testimony of Blu-menbach— Negro most wronged in destroying his 
Sense of Manhood— Present Condition of Human Beings no absolute evidence of 
what they are to be— Negro Powers never fairly tested— Aptitude for Mechanics- 
Music— Eloquence— Profound Religious Nature— Ancient African Fathers of the 
Church— Origen, Tertullian, etc.— Henry H. Garnett— Theodore S. Wright— Stephen 
Gloucester— James W. C. Pennington— Samuel R. Ward— Alexander Crummell— 
Colored Woman of New York Foundress of its Sabbath Schools— James M'Cune 
Smith— James Derham— Encomium of Dr. Rush— Phillis Wheatley— Cassar the 
Carolinean Bloomneld— Young Cuban Poet mentioned by Dr. Madden— Placido— 
His beautiful Poem— Blumenbach's African Poets— Benjamin Banneker— Geoffrey 
L'Islet— Anthony William Amo— J. E. J. Capetein— Sadiki— Job Ben Soliman— 
Thomas Jenkins— Ignatius Sancho— Paul Cuffe— Joseph Rachel— Eustace of St. 
Domingo— Toussaint— Napoleon's Envy and Cruel Treatment-Negro Tracts— Com- 
mon Friendliness of the Opponents— Mr. Van Brouer's beautiful Prophecy— A 
Poem, 811 



CONTENTS. XV 

LETTER XXVII. 

THE WRONG AND THE REMEDY. 

Rarity of Free Speech — Disabilities involved in Chattel Slavery — Protected only as 
Property — Insecurity and Abuse— Liability to be robbed, or even murdered— Premi- 
ums offered for killing Fugitives— Sufferings caused by the Master's Poverty— Economy 
of using up the Slave — Life shortened — Allusion to Algiers — Shahmah becomes ex- 
cited — Mr. Van Brouer's Defence — Anomalies — Flogging Institution at Charleston — 
Illustrative Parable — The Bandits — Meanness of doing what our Conscience must 
condemn — Marriage repudiated — Stroud — Taylor — Effect on the Master and his 
Family, ........... 324 

LETTER XXVIII. 

POOR, SERVILE AND DEGRADED WHITES. 

Economical Features of the Institution— Mr. Raffe's Statistics— Disfranchised White 
Americans— Border Ruffians— Thugs of the West— Southern Ignorance native— Tables 
of Comparative Economical Capability of the North and South— Labor, Source of all 
true Capital — All other Capital merely dead Substance — Mind and Hand-work go 
together— Grand Distinction between Man and the Lower Animals —Number of Slaves 
—Of Slaveholders — Of Non-slaveholding Whites of the South— Poor Whites of the 
South not Freemen — More oppressed and crushed than any other People — None to 
Speak for them — Capital squandered in the Idle Hands — Testimony of Mr. Gregg — 
Fearful number of White Paupers— Hooker's Definition of Law, . . . 334 

LETTER XXIX. 

THEORIES AND FORMS OF MANUMISSION. 

Mental Phenomenon — Mrs. Clement's Remedy — Mr. Clement's— Mr. Wells's— Captain 
Brande's— Mr*. Raffe's Reply — Increase of Slave Population — Revolution of St. 
Domingo— Power of its Leaders and Men — May be Renewed — Reproof of Mr. Wells 
— His Speech — Mr. Clement's Reply — Mr. Van Brouer's Remedy — Draft of a Manu- 
mission Bill — Advantages of the System — Mr. McDonough — His Plan of Self-Eman- 
cipation — His Character — Enthusiasm of his Slaves misunderstood— Anecdote, 342 

LETTER XXX. 

THEODOSIA TELLS OF HER GREAT- GRANDMOTHER. 

Visit to the Pine Woods — Shahmah surprised at himself— Vindicates himself— Votes his 
Love not a Weakness — Prospect of going to Rio — Hopes of Youley, and Brother-care 
over her — Woman seldom a Free, Intelligent Worker — Danger of Free Speech — Free- 
dom Outlawed — Music of the Pines — Pleasant Ride Home — Marriage Essential to the 
wholeness of every Human being — 'Visit to Theodosia — Her Depression — Old Villette — 
Her Rival and Revenge — The Bar Sinister — Shahmah becomes assured of his Love — 
His Distress — Theodosia's Strength and Endurance — Shahmah rejects Villette's 
Testimony — Theodosia confirms it — Three Witnesses of the original Wrong— Mr. Sheer 
and his Pacific Railroad Stock — Mr. Bennett's present Bankruptcy — His Sickness — 
Letter from the Father — He is Worse— Theodosia resolves to go directly to New 
Orleans— Shahmah proposes to attend her — Returns to Cottonwood— Takes leave 
of his Friends, and accompanies her> ...... 854 



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